until we meet again
by pseudonymous.writer.blogger
Summary: In which Jyn does not become one with the Force, which instead propels her into another universe, where she and James Tiberius Kirk become acquainted (or is it reacquainted?)... AKA an AU where Jyn and Cassian meet in Tarsus IV, and finds that history repeats himself.
1. beginning, again

**Hello, Star Wars/Star Trek fandom! I have long been a part of you, and when I watched Rogue One, I was quite haunted by the stars of the film.**

 **This is a very peculiar AU I have been working on for a while; it's very abstract, so I hope you'll all be patient with me.**

 **It will have two parts; it was supposed to be a one-shot, but, well, you all know how that goes.**

 **Truly hope you enjoy; any criticism will be duly noted.**

 **Much love to you all.**

* * *

There's a sense of peace as the explosion engulfs her, in the locked embrace she and Cassian share, the need for touch as death invites them fulfilled. There's also a sense of excitement for what lies beyond, for what she does not know and cannot know until this next moment-

She'll miss the _maybes_ and the _almosts_ she and Cassian Andor think of in this suspension, the moment before death, in each other's arms. She thinks of him, of her father ( _Your father would have been proud of you, Jyn_ ), of her mother, of the things she wishes she could say to the man in her arms to comfort him as he did her, of how they'll never get the chance to do so. She hears him whisper her name, as if it matters the most to him.

It almost doesn't hurt-but it does, if only for a moment.

Silence rings in her ears, and she wonders if she-if anything at all-exists.

* * *

"Jyn," her mother calls. She's playing in the farm, in the crops outside the house-rows and rows and rows of luscious, majestic green that make her giddy with joy. "Jyn, come back inside."

She contemplates running off so her father could chase her around in the fields, but a certain smell wafts into her nostrils and her ears perk up in delight. She feels a laugh bubbling deep inside her, and she runs to the door, eager to eat her mother's plomeek soup.

Her father's smile welcomes her as her mother's disapproving (though Jyn can read her easily: this "disapproving" thin line really has a hint of amusement hidden in the corners of her mouth) facade; her father picks her up and hoists her up his shoulders.

"Plomeek soup. It's someone's favorite in this household...I can't seem to recall who." She grins widely, tugging on his ears as she did when she was younger, wondering why his wasn't like hers. "You know that, Papa; it's _mine_."

"Oh! Yes, of course it is. Were you aware of this fact, Lyra?" Jyn giggles as her father imitates her mother's robotic voice.

"Galen, the soup will get cold," her mother's tone drones (she knows when love drips from it like honey: this is one of those times).

They eat and eat and laugh around the dinner table (with the exception of her mother) and she feels joyful, fulfilled.

* * *

Then, she notices-months or years later, she can't be sure when it all starts-the crops seem less green than before. She doesn't stop to think about it, playing with her toys in the field, but as the years go by, the fields grow smaller and smaller. At first she thinks it's her perception, that as she grows bigger, the unyielding strength and beauty and freedom the farm once presented to her decreased in proportion. (It's not.)

She's thirteen when the governor takes control of the situation, of the rotting fields and the dying crops and the barren land. There's nearly nothing left of the green she played in, of the green that Papa used to say were her eyes; left behind is a yellow-brown paste that dirties the fields and a fungus that kills all hope. Left behind is a family in despair, without a living, without food. Left behind is a governor who is forced to make decisions and choices she hopes, hopes to _God_ , he will regret for the rest of his life.

She's thirteen when the soldiers come, a whole platoon to her village. Her mother's ears straighten-as do hers-and she sees her blush an angry green. Her father tightens his grip on her mother's hand, and they share a moment of tense hesitation before the soldiers push one of their rifles into their backs. She wants to resist, wants to tell off the soldier when she's frightened by her mother's smoldering look, who sends her a tug through the Vulcan bond. It's clear what they'll do as her father wraps his arm around her waist: they will walk, the soldiers leading them on as if boxing them into a tight glass cage. They live on the outskirts of town, never bothering to come down to the rest of the village because of the length. She has always lived alone, played alone in the fields. But that day, they drag them all down to the public, crowded like sheep in the square, where she has only been in twice her entire life. A line is drawn down the middle in chalk on the asphalt, hardly seen under the hundreds of quaking legs.

She's thirteen when the governor ( _oh, what an honor it is for you to be visiting our town, have you reasoned out a method to solve the famine? Have you-_ ) stands on a public stage, his people scattered about him, a tall dictator with a large white coat flowing behind him. He steps down as the people quiet, hands on children's shoulders, fearful yet hopeful at the same time.

She's thirteen when it starts with a scrutinizing look, a jerk of his head, and his unheard command to the nearest soldier. It's unclear what the man is doing until a child is wrenched away from his parents' arms. The governor is separating them. Her father's grip on her tightens, and her mother's hand tenses on hers, and she stands in between her parents, defiant and rebellious as she is, stubborn and chin angled up against this man she does not trust, a man who has struck fear in her parents' hearts, fearless as they are. The governor approaches them, and she sees him up close, memorizes his face: an old, weary man with greying sideburns, pale cheeks, and a dramatic flair to his voice, a rich Shakespearean tone to his words. "The scientist-set him aside," he says, his soft voice betraying his tense shoulders. "We will be needing him."

She's thirteen when she almost screams in protest, when her father is wrenched away from her, and her mother grunts in surprise, screaming his name. She's too shocked to act on it. Galen Erso is dragged away, across the white chalk by two soldiers, struggling even then to force him away from his family. Two more hold her mother back, struggling to get the Vulcan under control. There's a lump in her throat as she listens to her parents' screams; there's a distant look in her eyes and she is not there in the center of the city, but in the green fields, drowning in the color of her own eyes.

She's thirteen as she stands, her mother's arm around her waist, pulling her in as the soldiers let her fall and return to the governor, who has finished his rounds. She's thirteen when she hears her whisper, "Whatever happens, you run, Jyn, run." She's thirteen when she sees her father mouthing at her to run, run, run; she's thirteen when she hears, vaguely, in the midst of the chaos, the governor's words; she's thirteen when her death warrant is signed, ordered by a dictator inspired by eugenics, when he speaks his name and their execution statement.

She's thirteen when she freezes in confusion, as her mother falls down beside her, pulling her down and covering her from the carnage and the blood, when she whispers, "Trust the Force, Jyn, run." When she lays beneath her mother's dying body and she sees her father separate from his own group, running toward her to free her from her cold embrace. When she sees her father fall from a stun blast in the chaos, eyes locked on her green field ones. When she freezes in shock-blinks twice, mouth agape, with her mother's blood in her hair, in her eyes, in her mouth, and she feels her emotions as she bleeds out over her ( _fear, fear, fear, panic, longing,_ Galen), seeping into her mind uncontrollably, too weak to control her emotions, and her voice ( _Trust the Force, Jyn_ ) in her mind through the bond they have, making her touch the Kyber crystal around her neck lovingly; when she feels the snap of her bond with her mother, the emptiness as she realizes her mother is gone and she plays dead, closing her eyes.

She's thirteen when she pushes out from beneath her mother's body, long after the troops and the governor and her father, dragged away, and the screaming people have left, ushered to some other place to be kept alive, because they were far, far better than her.

She's thirteen when she leaves her mother's body out of fear, leaves the hundreds of corpses lying where she lay only a few minutes before, and runs, _runs_ away.

Her eyes are green, like what her home planet used to be, but her soul is black with the blood that stains her clothing as she runs through the dirty yellow famine of what Tarsus IV _is_.

* * *

She goes to her farm, gathering her pack, any food she can salvage (most of the soldiers already took everything), any water she can find. She sets out to live in the woods and in the fields, where she had always dreamed of living, of laying in, and drowning in the sea of green.

But the planet reeks of death and pain, and when she settles down in the dark the first night, she cannot stop the tears from drowning her.

* * *

She meets Saw Gerrera on the fifth day she runs. It's near a river, and she remembers him from the time she was eight-her father's friend. Wild haired, ebony skin spotted with red spores, eyes old and weary, and limping, she barely recognizes him. But he recognizes her.

"Jyn Erso," he says with conviction. His eyes look sympathetic, as if he knows just by looking at the dried blood on her shirt what has happened. What has happened to his _friends_ , her _parents_.

She wants to run away, but she also desperately wants to trust him-the only familiar face in the woods full of phaser fire and blood.

So she nods and says, "Saw Gerrera."

They come to a mutual, unspoken agreement to accompany each other in whatever is left of Tarsus IV, whatever is left of its humanity.

* * *

They scavenge for food together, sneaking into the remaining villages or the abandoned ones for any chance of scraps left behind. They don't talk, not really; it's more of keeping the other alive for each other's sanity. She can't imagine surviving alone, lonely and dying.

So she stays with Saw, even though she knows she is just as expendable to him as one of the rotting corpses lying in the towns.

* * *

One night, half desperate to see if he has information and half desperate for someone else to know, she blurts out, "They took my father. They wanted his brain."

He says nothing.

Eventually she sleeps.

* * *

He teaches her how to fight by night and to hunt for squirrels by day, or whatever animal is left on the colony, with weapons made of fists and elbows and sticks and stones. She learns to catch food and roast it herself; she helps him determine which berries are healthy and which will kill them.

When they hear the phaser fire and the screams nearby, Saw grabs her hand and they run, run, run.

On the edge of one town, there's a wandering soldier, patrolling the woods. The town is wrapped in towers of barbed wire, locking in the people and locking out the others. It looks deserted, lifeless, hopeless; the edges are grey and the houses are dilapidated and unsanitary. They learn it's a camp for the _good_ ones-for the ones who were chosen to live.

Hot anger runs through her veins as she thinks of her slaughtered mother, the ones who took her father, the corpses scattered about the plaza. She becomes so angry she doesn't realize she's out in the open: a short, dirty girl with bright green eyes, an easy target for the man.

He spots her instantly and takes aim; she sees his fingers poised on the trigger, can hear his ragged breath, ears perking in anticipation and fear-

A shot fires, but nothing happens. She turns around to see Saw holding a phaser. It's set to kill.

The soldier falls.

Saw takes her hand, and they run, run, run.

It's then she decides to trust him fully.

* * *

That night, as she and Saw sleep in a cave, backs pressed against the other for body warmth (she misses her father, so, so much), she speaks. "Why do you have a phaser? And you never told me?"

It's silent in the dark cave for a few moments, making her think he's asleep.

Then: "I'm a dangerous man, Jyn Erso. You're lucky I knew your father."

She licks her lips in nervousness, in cautious fear. She doesn't know how to reply to that-demand for answers, and Saw will refuse. Keep silent, and the chance to probe for them will slip away. "Well," she starts, attempting a segue. "Thank the Force you had it."

Saw's scoff scratches at her dignity, and her hands find the Kyber crystal (and her mother). "The Force is a bedtime story, Jyn, only that and nothing more. If you truly want to survive, you must fight for your life and take as much as you need with force. Legends have nothing to do with it."

The strike ends the conversation quickly. Danger aside, she's glad she has someone to rely on, to trust (she doesn't listen to his cynical grumbling-sometimes she still feels her mother's presence somewhere in her, and that is enough for her to believe). She falls asleep with the knowledge Saw will wake her by dawn.

* * *

It's night, maybe a few weeks after finding Saw, when it happens. They come across a town and sleep in an abandoned house; it's been three days without thin, tasteless meat or sickly fish.

As they sleep against the wall, huddling together for body warmth, the door opens, jerking them awake. Alert for soldiers, they are surprised when a scrambling woman crawls in, mouth open in a sob and drawling unintelligible words and sounds.

She seems to beg them for food, for anything.

Saw holds her back as she leans forward to give her a scrap of her- _their_ bread. "Please," the inhuman wail sounds like. "Please, I, please-"

It's a large surprise when the woman-animal launches forward and tries to bite her; it's an even larger surprise that she doesn't immediately fight back from the shock. But she feels her arm wrenching forward, nearly pulling it out of the socket (who knew a starved human could be so strong?); she feels teeth sinking into her wrist and she screams, throwing her feet forward.

There's a flash and a thump, and she knows Saw used his phaser, but she's trying to breathe from the floor, in shock and trembling. Suddenly it's cold and her hands shake and she can't help but think, _That's what we will become_. She knows first hand how desperate she is; she knows that the madness in the woman is not her fault, she knows, she knows, she knows.

Saw's face looms over her, and he helps her up against the wall. He holds her as she sobs into his shoulder, as he cleans the puncture marks of the bite with what water they had left from the last river they found.

"Go to sleep, Jyn," Saw says, and she trusts him, so she does. The last things she sees are his eyes, full of guilt and sorrow.

When she closes her eyes, she thinks it's because he blames himself for letting the woman hurt her. She learns otherwise.

* * *

The next day, she is cold. She is alone.

Saw is not there. The dead woman, however, is there, staring at her with those desperate, empty eyes; half of their pack of items they gathered and made over the last few weeks (has it been weeks?), however, is there.

There's a cold, rushing fear that fills her every bone, a terror she hasn't felt since that day in the village, when her mother's death broke the Vulcan bond between them. She calculates it can't have been more than a few hours (how can she be sure?) since she fell asleep in Saw's arms, so perhaps he'll be back soon; but, then again, he has never left her before, right? There is no way of knowing he left to return or he left to abandon her. The pack contains her knife, her hunting staff, half the cup of water they had shared.

Saw may be dead- _no_ , she dismisses the thought. She decides to wait for him-according to sound Vulcan logic, he can't have gone far.

When the thought of being alone squirms into her heart, she controls her emotions, something she had never thought of before, and only heard her mother telling her father about the process.

She never needed to tame them before. But as panic sets in and fear of the emptiness in the woman's eyes rears into her every thought, she purges all emotion.

* * *

Saw doesn't come back that night. She survives on water, drinking miniscule sips throughout the night until she falls asleep.

Saw doesn't come back in the morning, or the next night, or the night after.

Fear grips her throat-did they catch him? Did they kill him?

She decides to move, seeking the body of her surrogate father for the past few weeks along the river bends, underneath the trees, in any of the nearby towns. Saw isn't there.

She blinks hot tears away when she realizes what has happened.

 _Alone_. She considers briefly purging all emotion once more, but for what? There is nothing _logical_ about this. There is no reason she should respond logically, either.

( _I'm sorry, Mama_.)

( _Trust the Force, Jyn._ )

(As her fingers tingle around the Kyber crystal, she can almost hear her mother, and moves on.)

* * *

When Saw's betrayal rushes towards her in her nightmares (leaving her- _just like her father_ ), she cannot sleep for the days after, and the days after that.

But her fear of the abyss known as loneliness recedes quickly to the back of her mind. She can survive on her own, she knows it, if the Force wills it ( _a bedtime story, Jyn, only that and nothing more_ , Saw's expression patronizes her, his mouth staying in its grim line; she shoves him into the corners of her memory).

Something tells her she already has, touching the light crystal around her neck.

* * *

Days pass, maybe weeks. She scavenges for food wherever possible-she eats a few rats while she's starving, using her knife to gut and skin them. Whatever is left of the crops, of the grain is useless. She hungrily ravages the empty villages she comes across, ignoring the ghosts haunting her every step. Every bite she takes is another man killed ( _Papa_?), she knows that. But she can't resist the thought of survival, of wanting more time.

She travels from town to town, over the hills of the once-beautiful planet, just as she and Saw had done. She's gaunt, her clothes stiff with blood, sweat, tears, and whatever water she can find in rivers and muddy streams; her lips are cracked and her feet are callused. She nearly loses her boots from walking too much, the edges cracked and fringed, surviving in the woods alone if she can't find a village to sit in, hidden in abandoned houses, away from the smell of the rotting grain (or is it the corpses?). In each of them, she closes her eyes and dreams of her mother and father, eating plomeek soup in green fields until the soup spills and stains the planet red.

* * *

Her aching feet march (or stumble) along the beaten path of roots and scraps of greenery; when she looks up, she is unprepared for the palm reaching for her throat, dangling her in front of the culprit.

Panic spikes inside her and she chokes, legs frantically wavering and kicking in the air vainly. She struggles to remember what Saw taught her in the little time they had. Whoever it is slams her down, and she loses all sense and all breath, her vision black, then suddenly white and empty. Her sight starts to clear to reveal a large man, fists clenching a large axe, staring her down from the sky-he seems to be taller than the trees, his bald head shining against the sunlight. "Please," she rasps out, her first time speaking in days.

"I've never tried little girl before!" he exclaims ecstatically, his mouth ruined by the blackness of his rotting smile and the gap where his front teeth should be. She pretends to be deaf to her helpless whimper.

When he attempts to swing the hatchet down on her, she rolls out of his way, grabbing a stick and waving it in his face. He roars with impatience, yielding his weapon with such cumbersome effort-his weakness. ( _One fighter with a sharp stick and nothing left to lose can take the day_ , Saw tells her as he holds her down with his elbows and she groans below him, arms fighting the force of his might.) As he tries to aim, she sprints below his extended arm and jumps onto him, driving the stick into his left eye. She feels bile rising as she hears the squirt, then nothing else but a shriek of pain and surprise; they both fall to the ground, the axe forgotten on the forest floor.

She scrambles away from him as the tall cannibal wails, wounded crudely. Perhaps it's fear, perhaps it's panic-but her hands find the man's weapon anyway. ( _When you fight, you fight to the death,_ Saw says, searching her eyes for any line of disagreement in the darkness of the woods. _Do not leave loose ends. Do not give chances to those who do not deserve it._ )

Her step wavers, the grasp on the hatchet slowly slipping with the blood from the man's eye. He lays on the floor, still yelling obscenities, but his energy is decreasing. _He ate others. He doesn't deserve to live_ , she thinks to herself.

( _One bite, another man dies._ )

The axe swings down. The man stills.

His head lays two feet away from his neck.

Her hands slip and the axe falls away from her, and she runs, choking on vomit that spills from the corner of her mouth, nearly suffocating her, and leaving a trail on the blood-ridden dirt of her home planet. She doesn't stop until she finds a river and stumbles more than jumps into it, bile and nerves and blood and tears mixing into the water, carrying her along with it. For once, she no longer cares where it takes her.

* * *

She kills her first on the fifth day Saw leaves her. It isn't her last.

* * *

She doesn't know how long it's been since her last scrap of-she doesn't know what. The surrounding woods have given away no berries. It's her fourth-or is it fifth?-day without water. So she lays, starving and shivering in the first story of a house on the edge of a town, two corpses, a man and a woman, lying not more than fifteen meters away from her, hands at the door as if they had crawled to the handle, begging for release before the soldiers, the _cowards_ , _bastards_ shot them in the back. _That will be me soon_ , Jyn thinks, desperately trying not to think of her own mother-or her father, who, for all she knows, is long dead and gone. Governor Kodos can't be trusted with a few thousand men as he was with eight thousand. Hysterically, she laughs and cries and screams, "Mama, will I become stardust like you?"

Her sobs rack her entire body, nearly breaking her brittle bones as she attempts to breathe; she finds she cannot as she tries to get her body under control, but only heightens the panic setting in. Her vision fizzes like a holoscreen, and her ragged not-breaths are all she hears-until the door opens, and there are footsteps.

She chokes back on a scream (thinking of Saw and the mad, dying woman, of where Saw is and where she could be had she fought back and didn't feel the sympathy towards one who had the same fate as her, of the cannibalistic man who wanted little girl for his lunch and received a stab to the eye and a blow to the neck) as they near her, possibly carrying a phaser and ready to empty it into her-she refuses to beg, to plead for mercy; by _God_ , she _will_ have her damn dignity; she _will_ fight back as long as it takes-

She can't see him but her fists are up and she struggles when he tries to tap her shoulder; she's certain she's yelling, but she can't seem to hear _what_ -

Then water comes rushing down her throat, soothes her senses, and she breathes a sigh of relief in instinct, choking on the sincerity with which it was administered.

"Slowly. Don't worry, I know what to do." The voice doesn't sound like the governor-he sounds young, about her age.

Her tongue laps for more, her body begging but her mind restraining her tongue from voicing her pleads.

Whoever he is kindly drips more of the heavenly water into her mouth, his other hand gripping her shoulder, acting as her anchor, keeping her from drowning in this kindness. Vaguely, she hears herself saying, "Oh, thank God, thank you, oh God-" before she promptly passes out in the boy's arms.

* * *

It's the warmth that wakes her. When she opens her eyes, she sees she is no longer in the house, but in darkness. There's cloth on her body, covering her shivering bones, and she's lying on the dirt.

A hand on her shoulder, and she almost screams in reply; another warm hand covers her mouth, sensing her panic. "Don't worry. It's me. I gave you water," he says, voice calm and clear. It's soothing. It's not like her father's voice, deep and full of joy, but it's not brittle and hard. His words flow like water, but his tone is heavy and authoritative. She _wants_ to trust him. It's as if she's listened to his voice before, whispering her name in her ear. (She tries not to think of Saw, and of how she had thought that about him, too.)

Her eyes adjust to the darkness, and she can see the outline of the boy beside her. She nods to assure him of her cooperation, and when his hands release her, she pushes her body up, sitting cross-legged beside him, knees touching.

"Who are you?" she asks, whispering. ( _Do you know what I've done?_ )

She hears him lick his lips before he replies. "JT," he hesitates. A pause.

"What's your real name, then?"

He doesn't answer. "What's your name? How did you survive?"

"I'm Jyn," she says, realizing her throat is croaky with disuse. When was the last time she spoke to anyone? _Saw_ , she thinks, and immediately, her ears burn green with deep anger. Why should she trust this boy, even if his voice sounds so, so dear to her; why should she trust this boy who saved her life? Didn't _Saw_ do that? (Didn't Papa leave her?) "Now, what's yours?" she asks with an edge.

Her snarl is welcomed with his own scoff. "Look, I don't know you and you don't know me. You're pretty old for our group, so I'd like to make sure you don't kill anyone just so you don't starve. Got that clear?"

She looks straight into his direction, wherever the boy is, and grits her teeth in defiance. Chin up, she counters, "Trust goes both ways."

There's a grim silence that follows, then a heavy sigh. "Jim. Call me Jim."

 _That doesn't seem right_ , she thinks; she ignores this, her palm digging for her Kyber crystal's solace before she nods and answers his question. "I ate whatever I came by and went into all the towns for whatever I could find."

"Anyone with you?"

She almost says no when her breath catches.

"Right," the boy-Jim winces, sighing with sadness. "Sorry I asked." She nods in reply.

"Well, I'll introduce you to everyone in the morning. Right now, you should sleep."

"Everyone?" she asks, curious, scared.

"Everyone," Jim affirms, soft and certain. "I've got a few kids. There's a lot of them, actually, but most of them are too small to understand it fully. What just happened to us." She can feel him looking at her, as she's staring at him back, even though they can't see the other in the dark. "But you're not like them. You're older. I think...I'm about your age."

"I'm thirteen," she says; he returns, "So am I."

They both nod and feel each other's understanding, the air between them one of empathy. They are older. They understand what the governor has done, what the governor seeks to do to them if they are discovered. Death is their friend, lurking in the shadows, waiting. They know this-they will protect the others with this unspoken agreement. The word murder floats between them, as if the smell of having killed someone in the past reeks from both of their hands, but they don't confront it verbally-not when they need to survive and protect at any cost.

"I know you're Vulcan, but you should rest-go into a healing trance, whatever you need. I'll be keeping watch."

"Half," she corrects. "I'm half Vulcan. I'm also half human. My parents…" she trails off, wondering why she is telling this boy her story. He did save her life, she reasons. She was never one for logic-her mother was, but her mother and father never forced her to embrace the true immersion into logic, only to have proper mental shields blocking the transmittance of emotions through a simple touch. Perhaps that is why they moved to Tarsus IV-to embrace the human side of themselves. To embrace emotion, let it out of unhealthy control. It _is_ illogical, but perhaps her mother always loved her father for it.

Exhausted, her eyelids flutter at the thought of them, her heart incessantly beating. "Rest, Jyn," Jim whispers, pushing her down gently with his hand on her shoulder. Reluctantly, she obeys.

* * *

The next day is bright and jarring. The heat on her face is welcoming, and she takes in her surroundings. She's lying in a cave, the grey-black rocks oppressive and dark, the sunlight streaming into the opening a few meters away from her right. She glances to her left-and starts, scrambling up in attention, when she sees there are children, ten of them, staring at her. Presumably her ears, as most of them are human, with the exception of a green skinned girl-an Orion-and...another Vulcan. He stares at her with obvious distrust.

"You're awake," she hears Jim say, turning around sharply to see him for the first time, curious and eager to see her savior. Perhaps the first person she can trust in this place.

The light streams in behind him as if a spotlight hitting the reluctant star, the forced leader of the group of children. He's as gaunt as her, maybe even leaner, and his stance is military, erect. He holds himself confidently, but by the way his voice was full of exhaustion yesterday, she knows it's for the children. His hair is a sandy blonde, short and spiky, most likely with sweat and and dirt; his hands are curled into fists, always ready to strike; his legs are steady, strong, though sticks, always ready to run.

His eyes-they rival hers in striking the enemy blind. His eyes are such a strong shade of blue, blaring his emotions with such savageness. She feels breathless, shocked at the sight: his eyes are the shade of blue Tarsus IV's skies once were before the slaughter of thousands of people. Before plomeek soup spilled like blood and stained the beauty red.

"Yes," she affirms at his observation, at a loss for words.

He nods in response, unreadable. "This is Jyn," he addresses the group. "You can trust her."

He gestures for her to follow him around the cave, and he introduces her to all the children.

She meets Kevin, bundled up in blankets, thumb stuck in his mouth as if it provided him with the nutrients needed to heal his malnourished body. His eyes shine with innocence and fear and she comforts him with a tentative smile, surprising herself. Shyly, Kev, as Jim calls him, smiles back when they move on. She meets Alex, the little Orion girl, barely six, who looks up at her with such a brilliant, flashing smile that she's blinded, chirping her introduction before Jim can utter her name. Her red hair is long, hanging down from her forehead in dirty, stringy strands. Then there's Baze, a buff boy larger than her by half a meter, hair in large curls across his forehead. There's a sadness around him, but when they meet, he already treats her like an older sister. He takes her hand, leading her to his brother, whose blue eyes are empty and cold, but whose smile is anything but. Chîrrut, he's called, and he smiles as if they've known each other for a long, long time and cracks a joke about his blindness, and he bears the scars marring his head with pride, white rippling across yellow. ("When the riots broke out, a couple of men barged into their home, demanding for whatever scrap they had left," Jim tells her when they leave the two brothers to themselves. "Damn bastards carved his nerves out with kitchen knives.")

There's Helen, with her curly brown hair, and her brother, Poe, with dark brown eyes and hopeless looks on their faces. There's Melshi and Pao, childhood friends, refusing to leave the other's side like a pair of Siamese twins, both with dark blue eyes (not _jarring_ like Jim's).

They come to the Vulcan, who still glares at her so comically with distaste that she wants to laugh. His dull brown eyes don't say a word except for the obvious message to _shut up_ to her, turning to Jim with concern written in the lines across his forehead. He's eleven, Jim tells her, a bit younger than her and Jim, and his gray clothes are a part of his light skin, sticking to his back with sweat and dirt. "I do not think this is the best course of action," he says monotonously, making her choke back on the memories of her mother. "The probability of her betraying us, considering her age and her heritage, is very high, Jim. It is very high."

"Kay," Jim warns, smirking underneath the captain-like pose. "Be nice. She's going to be our friend."

Kay sighs in frustration, looking at her (she bites back a giggle), nose wrinkling and eyes squinting, as if evaluating her trustworthiness and whether or not he should lunge and attack her right then. Finally, he huffs in defeat, and says snarkily, "The captain says you're a friend. I will not kill you."

She raises her eyebrows. "Thanks," she says dryly. Turning to Jim, she inquires, "The captain?" ( _Yes, captain...that sounds right_.)

Jim nearly smiles, but ultimately falters. "Captain," he agrees.

The last one is Bodhi, a small boy, perhaps three years old, rocking himself in the corner of the cave, staring at the ground. She looks to Jim in worry, and his mouth is a grim line. Stepping forward, he offers his hand to the boy, and he only curls into himself more. The little child is a mere ball against his leader. "I found him only three days ago, in another town," Jim confides in a low voice. "He doesn't quite know me yet."

She nods, and decides to try. Her voice is sweet in a way it has never been since she was eleven, but she tries. "Hello. My name is Jyn," she says, sitting down and bringing her knees up beside her, mimicking his position. "It'll be alright. Me and Jim-we'll take care of you."

 _How illogical you are_ , she chastises herself. She's only just met this boy and she already trusts him. Granted, he saved her life, giving her water when she herself would never have given away any of her provisions. One bite, one sip; another man falls. One life for another.

The boy looks up carefully, eyes wide in fear, mouth nearly open in a silent, frozen yell of distress. When he catches her eye and takes her in, though, it changes into an expression of curiosity. She forces herself to swallow her doubt-and smile. She leans in, her head offered to the inquisitive fingers.

Bodhi's small fingers are thin and sharp, but they are gentle as they run over her ears. When he appears finished, she retracts her head and watches him struggle. "Wulcan," he half-asks, searching her eyes for affirmation.

"Yes," she replies, not bothering to correct him, smiling at the innocence still held in this tiny cave, in the midst of the blood flowing from four thousand corpses (and from her own hands, as well as Jim's). "Wulcan."

* * *

They gather more strays as they go along as she did, traveling from town to town, gathering whatever food they find. They're a family now, comforting one another and playing with the little ones.

Their clothing becomes tattered and dirty, their lips drier and their bodies more frail.

They become rebels, running from phaser fire when they sniff the air and sense Kodos' men coming, stealing and eating whatever they come by, relying only on themselves, trusting no one-not even the adults who come to beg them for food. She is prepared to fight more of the ones who wanted to devour her like a pig; she thinks of Bodhi and of Alex and does not want to taint any of their souls as she did hers.

 _One bite, another man falls_ , a mantra in her mind; the dying woman and Saw are pictures haunting her, his eyes of guilt- _for leaving her?_ , she thinks in anger-and the desperate look in her father's eyes as he realizes he won't be able to reach them in time when the stun blast hit him-but she hides her face from Jim. She can't imagine ever telling him about Saw. The wound is too deep and recent, and that would lead to telling him about her father.

And what if he leaves her? Then what? They all do eventually, don't they?

She earns Kay's trust bit by bit, with each smirk and tease between the two of them. She saves his life by taking down a soldier whose phaser is trained on him, tackling the man and kicking him into the river- but not before he swipes at her shoulder with a knife, a stinging sensation filling her arm. Then it's Kay's turn to hold onto her other arm, pull, and run together, catching up with the others ahead of them, Jim carrying Bodhi on his back, unable to help.

As they reach their destination, the soldiers losing them in the thick of the woods, as Jim had planned, Kay turns to her and expresses his gratitude in the most Vulcan way possible: "Your behavior, Jyn Erso, is continually unexpected."

She smiles as his ears turn green and he blushes with thankfulness, rushing into the cave with his blackened gray clothing and his dull brown eyes that she learns holds an ocean of emotion. Beside her, Jim puts Bodhi down and smiles. "I guess Kay likes you, now," he says.

At night, she stays with Jim outside whatever cave or house or cabin they find. They develop exit strategies for the kids, plans if anyone is found, if anyone is captured. They vow to die rather than be taken-she knows the berries on the planet, and she knows which are poisonous. (She remembers her mother telling her, warning her whenever she played out in the fields; she remembers her mother's smile and the throbbing absence of a Vulcan bond and forces the memories out of her mind.) They carry a handful with them at all times-just them, not anyone else. They agree that if anyone were to die, it would be one of them, and the other would run with the rest; they agree that if anyone were to be killed, it would be one of them to do it, and none of the others.

It doesn't take them long to trust each other. They are, after all, responsible for the others. They are, after all, reliant on the other. But, she suspects, there is also that underlying current between them, the sense of familiarity, of _I've held you in my arms before, in another world, in a different universe_ , and of their attraction to danger.

At night, Jim tells her stories of an unwanted child in a lonely house with an empty mother and an angry uncle (he's angry about Kodos, about the soldiers putting them down one by one; he's screaming at her, yelling desperately, "I've been in this fight since I was six years old!" as they lose another one they just found, failing to save them from the malnutrition); at night, Jim tells her stories of a starship captain ( _Captain_...she thinks) for a grand total of eight minutes, who dies and leaves him wanting to go back to where he was born-space.

She tells him stories of her mother and her father, of the struggle between humanness and logical thinking, of how her mother balanced both because she loved both. She tells him stories of her mother's words, of the Force which binds all things, of Jedi knights who wielded it with grace, of the Kyber around her heart that has been hers, her mother's, her mother's mother, and so on. She tells him stories of a dark Empire threatening a Rebel force, of a weapon that could destroy an entire planet, of a haunted dark warrior who turned against all those he loved for love, of crushing the weapon and the Empire only to repeat the maddening cycle of murder and chaos, of the sacrifice and futility of the rebellion.

They both agree it's clear that history repeats itself, though it was only her mother's bedtime story. (But they both agree that bedtime stories are always true.)

She falls in love with the sound of his voice, soft but firm and strong. She falls in love with the boy who whispers her name at night to wake her; she falls in love with the boy who tells her his secrets and she tells him hers. She has never before interacted with another or had a friend besides her parents (and where are they now?).

"I'm not used to people sticking around when things go bad," Jim whispers to her one night, after he tells her about the stars and points out his birthplace.

"Welcome home," she says, thinking of her father and of Saw and of the Force, leading her to James Tiberius Kirk.

* * *

They stay in an abandoned cabin when another disaster occurs. She and Jim are sleeping back to back when she feels Jim jerk awake, and so does she. He puts his hand on her mouth, and she listens-voices, deep and low and male, as well as footsteps, heavy, with the clink of ammunition after each step.

They spring into action: they run into the cabin and wake the kids up, and they know it's time to leave. The little ones go first, confused and scared, with the older kids they trust: Melshi and Pao take Bodhi, Helen takes Poe; soon, they're all out through the burrow they dug, taking them outside ten meters away from the cabin, except for Jim, Jyn, and Kay.

Jim opens his mouth to tell Kay to move, but Kay shoots back, "If I leave now, there is a ninety percent chance that one of you will say something stupid to get the other to leave, and the other will counter that he or she will not, thus causing both of you to be killed."

Jim rolls his eyes and whispers, "Kay, dear God, help me; Kay, just-"

And the door kicks open, the soldiers trailing into the room, phasers raised up and fingers itching. Fear pulses through, along with adrenaline. Jim reaches out and pushes the phaser upwards into the nearest soldier, the aim straying and shooting into the ceiling; the soldier falls down with a bloody nose and a headbutt. She throws her arms forward, attempting to do the same and succeeding; the next man is not so easy to defeat. He slams his body into hers, pushing the phaser into her temple and throwing her against the cabin wall. She kicks against him with her foot, and he groans; she takes advantage and brings her fist into his nose and her other under his chin. He yells an obscenity and pulls the trigger, his aim off from her kicking it down to the ground, knocking it out of his hands.

There's a horrible wail behind her, and she gasps, ice flowing through her veins in fear. _Not Jim_.

When she turns, it's Kay who's on the ground, hand clutching his ankle, green blood spreading over the floor. Jim is struggling against his own soldier, who he has locked in an embrace, arm around his neck-his eyes widen at the sight in front of him. As he reaches her eyes, his mouth opens in a warning; she realizes it's too late: she has let her guard down and ignored the enemy in front of her, distracted.

Kodos's man grabs her arm and wrenches backward, pulling it out of its socket; she screams as she feels the ligaments twist and turn and stretch involuntarily; she wails as she hears a loud pop.

She falls without breaking the shriek, the thud heavy and loud, body aching and shoulder on fire. She hears the phaser fire without hearing it; the soldier drops beside her, eyes open and dead. _Jim_ , she tells herself, relieved, and pushes herself not to pass out-Jim has Kay to worry about.

Blue eyes blink at her, lips mouthing words she can't hear. She blinks up in confusion, until his eyes of concern wake her up. She shakes her head (thinking of how weak she was when Saw left her, of how she couldn't fight and he left her) and brings herself up, ignoring the pull of her shoulder. "I'm fine," she thinks she says. "Get Kay."

He nods, mouth grim, but he picks up Kay gently, unconscious and bleeding, and nods to her.

They walk back to the others; she struggles to stay awake, but the pain helps in some ways. The kids look in concern, Chîrrut tugging on Baze's arm to understand the situation, but Jim shakes his head and promises them an explanation later. The captain, as Kay calls him, orders them to run, and they do.

* * *

Her shoulder seems folded into her body, deformed and aching; it's numb after the run to the next hideout: a cave they find fifty kilometers away. Kay's wound exposes the mess of nerves and muscles of his ankle, green blood splattered across the floor where he was half dragged, pouring openly by the second. The children gather around him, laying in a Vulcan healing trance, she and Jim assumes-but nothing can be sure.

She herself had never been taught how to do such a thing. (She had always told herself that she'd learn, or ask her mother when she was older. Obviously, she made a mistake.)

Jim looks at her in desperation, eyes full of compassion and love for the young boy, and she feels it in herself, as well.

She pushes forward, kneeling next to the pale boy, hesitating, but deciding to do what needed to be done. If she lets down her walls, for just a moment, Kay will hear her. Maybe, hopefully, he will wake up. Her fingers latch onto Kay's arm, and she sends a thought forward, letting all her walls down- _Saw, the woman, Mama, Papa_ - _Kay, are you alright?_

There's a gasp, and she lets go, jerking away violently as she feels Kay's presence. Jim tries to steady her, hand on her back, but she flinches away so startlingly that the other kids shrink away, and Jim's hand returns to his side. He gives her time to rebuild her walls, to collect herself, and turns everyone's attention to Kay. A perfect captain, she thinks.

"Kay, are you alright?" he asks, and she sees the dull eyes open and flutter with pain, heart wrenching at the sight.

Weakly, he nods, and turns his to her, shivering away from him. "Are you?" he asks.

She nods. "Yes," she whispers, wishing she doesn't sounds so weak.

"I find that answer vague and unconvincing." The drawling tone makes her want to punch the boy in the face.

"Jyn," Jim starts, heading toward her. When she flinches and shakes her head minutely, his steel blue plays a war of decision before deciding to agree with her. _Later_ , his eyes say, trailing on her shoulder.

"Well, Kay," he tries to alleviate the mood, though his stance, stiff and tense, says otherwise. "We'll have to fix that phaser wound before it festers."

"And how do you suppose we do that?"

Jim's smirk lights up the darkness of the cave. "We make ten men feel like a hundred."

* * *

"That is a bad idea," Kay says when Jim finishes. She almost laughs, but she's near the breaking point of exhaustion.

Alex sits beside her, her red hair tickling her nose, her warmth comforting her. She is her little sister, knowing when she needs to be left alone yet be helped at the same time, in the right way. Her heart swells at the sight of the green girl's hands pointing up at her eyes and smiling, chirping away about her favorite color, proud of her heritage-but shakes the image away, the memory of another night in another cave, days ago before anyone had been grazed by a phaser.

Jim shakes his head, and so does she. "It's the only way, Kay," she says softly. "We have to get something to help you. Think about this logically."

Kay's pout is enough to make her laugh hysterically, but she stops herself before she presents anymore weakness to the kids. It's bad enough that Kay is hurt, one of the older ones of their group; she can't make Jim's burden greater.

Jim lays his hand on Kay's arm. "Kay, please. Trust me. When have I ever let you down?"

Kay blinks. "I prefer not to answer that question."

Jim's stance nearly deflates in relief at Kay's sense of humor, and his eyes roll in fake despair.

The young Vulcan seems to relent, sighing tiredly from his position on the dirt floor. "Alright, but I will accompany you so none of you do anything stupid."

This time, she laughs in response, panic bubbling within her at the thought of Kay limping across a populated town for his own medical needs, only to be shot in the head by a phaser in response. "You can barely walk. You're not coming."

As his eyes begin to close, he retorts, "I'm surprised you're so concerned about my safety."

"I'm not," she swallows, letting Kay enjoy their little argument as she worries about his wound, the wound she caused because she slammed that phaser down as the guard shot it. "I'm just worried they might miss you and hit me."

She hears him faintly whisper, "Doesn't sound so bad to me."

* * *

That night, as the others sleep and ready themselves for the next day's plan, Jim is waiting for her outside the cave after she puts Alex to sleep. "I have to set your shoulder," he says without preamble, and steadies her away from the cave. She leans on him more than she cares to admit.

"Are you alright?" she asks, and he answers almost immediately, "I'm fine."

She scoffs as his fingers move across her shoulder. "I find that answer vague and unconvincing."

"Oh, shut up." His blue clashes with her green, and he relents. "You can look me over as soon as I fix your shoulder. It's going to hurt," he grimaces, and pushes her shoulder into place.

She thinks she screams because the next bit of consciousness she is aware of is being in Jim's arms, his voice whispering assurances into her ear, soft and warm against her cold, numb skin.

She nods off without checking on him, and when she wakes, he shows no sign of weakness.

* * *

Their first raid of a town of chosen people (perhaps one of them is Galen Erso, she wonders) lifts her off her feet in adrenaline. She'd never committed a crime before but in another life, she thinks she could live off the thrill of adventure.

It's the dead of night, and there aren't many guards-perhaps because of the two explosions made of stolen firecrackers and overheated phasers from unconscious or killed soldiers, each about five hundred meters away from the thick walls of the town, one towards the north and the other towards the south. The north is set aflame by Melshi, who ran far, far away with Kev, the small boy grinning with delight; the culprit in the south is Pao. Helen and Poe stay behind to watch over Bodhi, the three-year-old the baby of the group, and Kay, making sure he stays in his prone position.

Baze and Jim take care of the remaining guards patrolling as she destroys the lights from the nearest tower, Chîrrut outside the walls, not wanting to leave his brother. (Baze had yelled at him to stay in the cave, protesting as loudly as they could, but Chîrrut smiled and said, "I can keep watch," earning a snicker from Baze like candy from a child.)

She hunts through the houses with Alex, silent and swift. The Orion girl grins so brightly when she picks up all five food rations and the medical kit for Kay in the house that she's afraid the people inside will see its radiance.

When they emerge from the town, the guards are hurrying back, not having found anything besides the explosion and its fragments. Chîrrut stands near where they had left him, a large stick-made staff in his hands.

Their eyes adjust to find a prone body next to his feet.

They look at Chîrrut in awe. He smiles, clear blue eyes laughing in the dark, and says, "He didn't see what hit him."

Alex laughs the hardest, and Jyn can't deny that the sounds of their low, wheezing laughter are the happiest noises she has ever heard.

It's the last smile they ever see from their little Orion girl.

* * *

When Alex dies of starvation and pneumonia, they almost fall apart at the seams. They are running, the phaser fire just a few miles behind them, coming rapidly by the second; Kay limping, but healed. The rocks are slippery near the dirty stream; she falls, submerged underneath the bubbling, steaming water, laced with mud and animal dung.

When they don't see her red hair emerge, the smaller kids sent up ahead of them, Jim jumps in.

It takes several minutes for the blonde and crimson duo to pop their heads out of the water, Jim struggling to hold onto the brittle stick Jyn offers.

Alex lasts four days before she coughs her last breath, crimson blood mixing into her wet hair, mouth nearly open in a ferocious sob. She dies in her arms and she feels her walls chip away, fading like the little girl had and breaking like she is.

Jim says nothing. Neither does she. (Jim crawls further into himself; she stops him with a hand on his shoulder and a push back down into the dirt for rest, a distant memory of distrust and choices to trust between them.)

They leave her in the dust, covered and packed with dirt, leaving a single green leaf they found, scouring the woods for anything that would make green Alex smile. Her own green eyes turn darker (and Jim's eyes harden more into JT's) as they leave the fallen little girl behind to become one with the barren fields of Tarsus IV and one with the Force.

* * *

They save each other many times over the weeks the dead fields of Tarsus IV give them. The first is when they stumble onto another adult, one who gives her chills as she sees the _dead, dead_ eyes of the old woman in the house and Saw leaving her. She stumbles as the woman lunges, snarling about running away before the soldiers attacked them. Jim does what Saw did: he pulls the woman off her, and breaks her neck to end her of the misery. She can feel bile as she berates herself for her inaction; but Jim does what Saw (and her father) did not: he stays.

The second is when they go alone to a populated, surviving town, with promising _food_ and electricity, as if untouched by the famine (untrue). It looks as if it's the same camp where Saw killed the soldier, where he first saved her life. Unyielding brick stones laced with vines of crawling, deadly wire lines the town. They intend to scale it and jump inside, then jump back out with substantial food. It's stupid. Desperate.

It works.

He lets himself be the distraction-she protests, but she knows she's lovelier, more deceptive in the chance she is caught. They crawl in and shortly afterwards, he lets out a whoop and throws rocks at the nearest guard tower, running around the walls that keep the people inside. She crawls into the window of the nearest house.

She slips in and out undetected, not needing her charming green, nostalgic eyes for anyone-they've all been enlisted to aid in the search for an "undesirable", someone who needed to be exterminated because their existences outweigh the life of whoever it is causing commotion outside their homes, according to the voice on the intercom, blasting throughout the city. She smiles thickly as she surveys her gatherings: they have a bag of three large loaves of bread, two slices of meat, and three bottles they can use later for drinks.

When she waits near the stone wall for him to reappear, lights turn on to the center of the village instead, a spotlight in the plaza. It's Jim.

They've caught him, she realizes with the sickening thump of her heart, and they've done a number on him. He's manhandled, brought to his knees in front of the accumulating crowd; blood streams openly from his nose, and he's forming a black eye on the right side of his face. Blue eyes still livid and jarring, he begs her to run, the words in the air and in his eyes and in the plans they've made together. The berries-he'll take them.

But she can't-she can't seem to do this without him. There's something _about_ him that makes her whisper, _no, not you-you're not supposed to die_.

Her feet move of their own volition, and she sprints to a forgotten guard tower, most soldiers directed to the center and outward in search of a desperate, selfless boy. There is one guard, but she takes care of him swiftly-her knee jams into his spine and she grabs his gun from behind, jerking it abruptly in his throat. There's a strangling sound as she blocks air from his lungs, an unheard thud as he loses consciousness. She takes the guard's phaser, scampers inside, and shoots every electronic panel on sight. _Make ten men feel like a hundred_ , Jim had said that day, when they raided one of the governor's towns for the first time. So she makes one woman feel like ten men.

The world is plunged into total darkness.

She runs, runs toward the center of the plaza with all the screaming people running toward her direction, presumably, toward the tower or toward their homes for flashlights. She's pushed, shoved, screamed at; she pushes back harder and they know she won't be swayed.

By the time she reaches what seemed to be Jim's last position, her eyes have adjusted to the darkness-there are three bodies lying on the floor. There's the smell of blood and liquid pooling near her boots, seeping onto her toes through the hole the right one has developed. Her breath catches, fearing, trembling, _not him, not him, not him_ -

A hand on her shoulder, and she moves to disarm it, flipping the body onto the floor and flinging herself atop him, fingers ready to strike her opponent's eyes; he catches her wrists and whispers, "Jyn."

She lets out a small gasp and almost collapses from the relief. But she scrambles up from their position and pulls him up, letting her arm wrap around his torso for support. She feels his body stiffen, and he pulls away. "I'm fine," he says, and she ignores the strain in his voice. The kids- _their_ kids. They have to do this-to survive. "Let's get out of here."

Before she can utter a response, he takes her hand and they rush from the guards and people scrambling to work their flashlights and find them, scaling the wall and dropping down on the ground amidst the phaser fire near their heads and the screaming and panic of the town. He retakes her hand and doesn't let go when they run back to the cave, readying for a night of moving _immediately_ , with a pack of a supplies and Kodos's dogs on their tail.

He has to wait three days until he can confront her of her decision, in a new location six days of day travel away from the last. Their trail is impossible to track (they made sure of it). In the light of the fire, he looks at her with blue eyes shining with doubt, anger, confusion. "You should have left. We've talked about this before. You should have followed my instructions, to the letter, but you _didn't_. Now, I want to know _why_."

She doesn't want to deal with his self-hatred, not when she's been watching his every move, his every action for the slightest hint of massive injury. Not when she has been _this_ close to losing the one person she trusts on this planet, the first person not to leave her so far. "I couldn't," she says simply. "You would have done the same."

He shakes his head, livid with anger. "No, that doesn't justify what chaos you brought to that place-how many people died when we left, Jyn? Don't you care about those people, don't you see it's not _their_ fault?"

( _I love you, Stardust_.) "Of course I know that, of course I care, but all I could see was-"

"What did you see? Why would you throw away that chance the _distraction_ gave you? I volunteered for it, I knew the risks, and you had no right-"

"You had no right to leave us all!"

Jim splutters at that, shocked at her outburst. The woods around them are quiet and dead. The children in the cave are hopefully asleep. She can see him, his steel blue eyes softening by the second, through the soft embers of the fire dying in front of them. Smoke and mirrors.

"I…I did what I had to do. You would have been fine without me."

She shakes her head at the thought of being alone without him, leaving her.

"I would be dead without you."

* * *

She tells him about Saw and her father that night.

He tells her about Sam (and he still remembers that day, the red car speeding down the road, and how it led him to here-to her).

It seems she's not alone in having the ones they love leave.

It seems, after that night, that they're not alone at all.

* * *

It all goes down to hell weeks later. (How long has it been since she left her parents that day? She doesn't know, has absolutely no idea.)

They're walking on a hike, in search of berries, in the meantime relocating their hideout more to the north (not that it matters to them-surviving the next day is all they think about, wandering aimlessly around the planet, avoiding anybody they see). All of them wander freely, a hint of peaceful childishness in their group as they savor the dying trees and the clusters of bushes of the only food that lives on the planet.

Then the shots come-rapid, bursting into their small paradise of peace; Jim springs into action, ordering them all to start running, an unnecessary order, but still the captain's voice is authoritative and jolting.

Her and Jim's stolen phasers jostle against their hips from where they clipped them on their waistbands.

Their run brings them atop the hill of dirt and yellow remains of a field. Jim is behind her, Bodhi struggling to walk on chubby legs up ahead. She scoops him up into her arms and dashes over the rocks barefoot, feet callused and dry. The sharp edges cut into her feet, bleeding profusely. She lost her boots days ago, but they hadn't encountered soldiers until today. She barely feels the blood drip from the cuts, but she knows she'll feel like hell when the day becomes night and they've outrunned Kodos's men.

The little boy in her arms sucks his thumb in worry, glancing behind her. "Bodhi, don't look at them. Don't worry, I've got you," she says under her breath, heavy and strained and not at all believable.

She doesn't feel Jim's breath behind her on her neck anymore, and she can't risk a look back. Kay is ahead, fully recovered from his phaser wound with the help of Vulcan techniques, along with the other children. They're almost at the top, leaves and dead roots cutting into their ankles, dirt smudging in between their toes. She has to take a calculated risk to save Jim's life-knowing him, the self-sacrificing idiot got himself in trouble.

"Kay!" she yells, and the Vulcan turns around quizzically.

"I believe the captain said-"

"I know what he said!" Jyn hands him Bodhi, shoving him into Kay's confused arms. "Keep running! We'll be right behind you."

At this, he raises an eyebrow. "There is a 38 percent chance of survival."

"Go!" She hears a heavy sigh from Kay as she turns around from the top of the hill, the ( _their_ ) kids descending quickly into the forest below. Good-trees provide cover, no matter how scarce they are, the greenish yellow hue of the dying leaves scattered about the brown cake mud of Tarsus.

The phaser feels sleek and small in her hand, setting it to stun in case her aim is off and she hits Jim. Below, a battle rages: Jim hides behind a boulder against the three coming men, large phasers up and fingers poised about the triggers. She and Jim had stolen phasers half the size of the ones they have now. There are two bodies on the ground, one bleeding from the chest, eyes fluttering to a near end. The other has no face, replaced by an intricate mesh of veins and flesh. She descends, running away from Jim's position to a large tree. She knows he'll cover her as she dodges phaser fire: she hears a scream and a groan, the thud as the body falls as she reaches the fat trunk. Two left, and her mouth twitches: divide and conquer.

Her soldier clucks with his tongue and whistles. "Girlie, girlie, girlie….where are you?"

She can hear the steps near her, the whistling louder. She clamps her hand around her mouth-when has she ever breathed so loudly?

The tip of a phaser inches forward, centimeters away from the left side of her face. _Closer_ , she begs. _Come closer_.

Unwittingly, he obeys. The phaser is close enough to touch, to grasp and push into his face.

The ugly man with beady snake's eyes and gaping mouth is prepared. He bares his teeth and pushes back, older and stronger than her. "Found ya," he laughs, and throws uses her shock to move her weight off the phaser, swinging it to the side and by causation, flinging her body into the mud. She lands with a groan, rolls over just in time to avoid being hit by a blast. She welcomes the sound of the man attempting to fire but silence following: his phaser has run out of energy to kill.

She scrambles up and reaches for his eyes, ready to jam her thumbs inside the sockets; he leans back and slams his foot into her side. She rolls away, clutching the area, but puts her fists up in defiance. The amused glint in his eyes angers her to no end, so she moves first. Growling, she lunges, throwing an upper hook up into his nose just as he jams his knee into her middle. She can't breathe suddenly, but she is rewarded with the sight of blood running down his nose. He curses her loudly and jabs into her cheek; there's nothing she can do while recovering from the previous hit. She groans, and lifting her face up again becomes difficult. Instead, she rams the side of her body into his, shoulder digging into his chest and pushing him down. She falls on top of him as he groans in response to the bony attack; her knees come around his neck and squeeze.

She can feel him struggling beneath her, hands clawing and scratching at her torn jeans, nails leaving emerald, angry marks as he panics, losing oxygen.

She closes her eyes. ("Please." A wheezing sound. "Plea…") And twists her knees sharply. She hears the crack of his spine. Feels it beneath her skin.

Jyn's hands shake as she lets out a breath, laying in the middle of the mud with a dead mind beneath her feet. She decides to focus on Jim. She needs to get to Jim.

She crawls up, hands struggling to support her weight, and looks from behind the tree trunk where she and the man ( _Kodos_ 's man, she reminds herself) struggled. She wants to vomit when she sees him-Jim is standing above a man, having just fired his phaser into his heart, the weapon hovering over the area. She can tell the man died only a few seconds ago because Jim rarely misses, shoots kill shots by instinct, and blood splatters color all over his face, mixing with the brown of the mud.

It's his eyes-the blue is so bright and livid, she swears he's turned mad. That he has finally left Jim Kirk and become JT-cold, calculating, hating.

She whispers, yells his name to get his attention; he flinches and snaps his head toward her, as if she's another threat, another soldier to take on. It takes a moment for his eyes to clear-her heart pounds with fear of losing him, of him leaving her like everyone else-

But Jim, honest, kind, hurt Jim is there with his clear blue eyes of the sky, and he whispers her name, mouth open.

Then his eyes widen and she turns around instinctively, the hairs on the back of her neck straightening rapidly, the vein in her forehead pulsing like a drum, beating against her brain in panic.

When she sees him, everything freezes-her heart stops and her jaw is slack; her hands are stuck in the defensive gesture she positioned them in.

He staggers toward her and gasps her name, blood evident across his side, the wound festered and yellow inside in large clumps of infectious material, crowding within his abdomen. Strapped to his chest is a timer atop liquid encased in two adjacent tubes, held together by some sort of wiring-a bomb?

His dark eyes are dark with despair, haunted with hallucinations, she assumes; his breathing is more of a dying wheeze.

"Jyn," he whispers, saying her name again for good measure-he's walking as if suspended in water, dragging his legs behind him, and she scrambles back.

Suddenly the pain of his betrayal is real, the graying curls of hair atop the ebony head too familiar for her ( _I'm a dangerous man, Jyn Erso._ ). Anger, hot frustration at everything fuels her, floods her every thought and action, tears prickling the corners of her vision, her cheeks heated and flushed. "You dumped me," she hears herself saying. "You _left_ me!"

"Jyn," Saw breathes out once more, breath painful, nearing the end. "Please, Jyn. I have to-the governor-"

He collapses, a heap of blood, infection, and danger dressed in mud and insects. The bomb ticks as he rolls onto his back with a groan, reaching out with his hand-he is _so close_ , like she could wake up with him back to back what felt like years ago, but was only at most five weeks ago. She takes it by instinct, a part of her cursing herself even as she does it, questioning her need and craving for Saw to stay alive and comfort her and teach her everything she needs to know, but somewhere else, perhaps where her mother resides (her finger traces the outline of the Kyber crystal over her heart), she tells herself that Saw is her second father, someone who helped her survive and saved her life multiple times. But she is still angry, nonetheless.

"You left me to fend for myself in the middle of a planetwide famine and genocide," she accuses, words bitter and hard on her tongue, a distasteful feeling of remorse and temptation lingering after she says it.

"I'm sorry," he apologizes ever so small, so simply, so softly, the breaths wasting away as he struggles to breathe. "Jyn, it's your father...he's alive."

Her lip quivers before she can reign in her emotions. ( _He's alive, Galen Erso lives; she'll see him again and he'll call her Stardust and swing her across his shoulders like she's eight_.) Her green blood rises, heart beating with unfair hope, with pain, with worry-Kodos, what has he done with him? ( _He's alive, but for how long?_ )

"What about him?" she asks, desperate for more information- _how_ , though? What has Saw been doing?

"Kodos has him, using him for a weapon-there's a weapon, and you have to stop it...you have to-" Saw's eyes shift and shake with every word, mad as a quivering dog, and her heart drops: it's a result of the hallucinations, a side effect of the obvious, fatal wound. There's no hope, not for Saw and not for her. There's no reason _to_ hope.

Saw must see the disbelief, or perhaps he smells it reeking out of her, because his dark eyes grow wilder and he grasps her hand, clenching it with all his might that she yelps as a reflex, trying to pry his fingers (even dying, his grip is strong) off hers to no avail. "Jyn, you _must_ believe me-I have proof-I-"

He cuts himself off, still holding onto her as his breaths grow more shallow still, and rummages about his clothing, searching until his fingers find and extract a small datapad, handing it to her, screen smeared with blood and his yellow pus, staining it a dark maroon and orange hue. She wants to throw up as she accepts it-she has no other choice; he's shoving it in her face and his eyes plead with her so sharply that she feels his gaze cut her, a blade piercing through the walls she's fought to build and take down and rebuild, and she thinks to herself, _is this what I looked like when he left me_? "I failed, Jyn, I failed…" Saw gasps, and she believes in his remorse, that he had cared for her, that he saw how horrible he was for abandoning her.

"I know, it's alright," she lies through her teeth, attempting to comfort the dying man. (It's not alright. She never wants to think about the days alone, trudging in enemy territory, with just her mind and her anger and her hatred. The first time she tried to meditate in the woods, the cannibal had attacked her-her first kill without Saw.) She knows it doesn't work: Saw is wise enough to know the end has come, and he talks over her as if she had said nothing.

"Save it...Save the dream...Tarsus IV-it isn't what it was meant to be," he's rambling, and she has no idea what he means, the hoarseness of his voice eliminating any trace of sanity.

The datapad is slimy around the edges, and smooth where her fingers reach long enough to hold onto. The cold surface grounds her to the moment, yet at the same time, she drowns once more in the green that no longer exists; she watches the man she trusted like a father or an uncle fade away, eyes begging her to believe a lie wrapped around a truth, mouthing at her to run ( _Whatever happens, Jyn, you run_ ) like Galen Erso did so many days ago (she's never been one to follow orders). Vaguely, she hears him: "Run, Jyn...Jyn, this vest _is_ the weapon, you must leave now…"

And somehow Jim is there, unwrapping Saw's strong fingers off hers; and somehow, she is _not_ , but she is kneeling in a brown-yellow field of famine and destruction and murder, and she has blood on her hands, but she doesn't know whose it is-Saw's or a soldier's or even hers; and somehow Jim is there, cradling her torso as he pulls her up, slinging half of her weight onto his shoulders and pushing half of his weight onto hers, exhaustion lining his body.

"We have to go, Jyn," he says ( _yells_ ) into her ear, pressed against her as they struggle up the hill. It's only then she realizes she's been staring at the body as the timer ticks down by the second-his voice wakes her up, a wave crashing into the shore, rushing onto her feet, cold and startling and stinging. She needs it.

Jyn nods, and works with him to get them to the top. The silence cushions their shock ( _her_ shock) until the planet rocks about them, and fire eats up the wilderness mercilessly, spreading and rushing to kill whatever lies in its wake. At the top, she and Jim survey the destruction that ravages the fields she used to dream of, the ones her eyes lived in and saw through-gone. The smell of charred life and raging death wafts through her senses, and she gags at the thought of Saw's body, how there's nothing left of it. Whatever weapon her father was a part of, that weapon has destroyed everything she can see, smoke rising from the depths of the treetops a long ways forward, hot anger pulsing from the east to the west. It seems to never stop-a flame licks dangerously close, and Jim and Jyn pull each other away, dragging themselves down the hill away from the worst of the fire, towards the south. But-their kids-Kay?

"Go back," Jim says-he's referring to their previous location, and she nods helplessly. She can only hope the others ran in this direction, and not haphazardly about the region the monstrous fire now engulfs. There's that word again- _hope_. Jyn knows there's no such thing, not anymore. No one is coming-Starfleet, the Jedi, the Force. Saw was right. Just an old bedtime story. (In reality, Jyn digs her fingers into her chest cradling the talisman close to her heart, thinking of her mother and of Saw and of her father; in reality, this is a war within-one part corrupted by Saw's betrayal and the scars of her soul, the other, someone who fell in love with a blue-eyed boy who gives her hope and a sense of familiarity; in reality, she is losing just as Jim is against JT, the fearless, immaculate leader who kills without mercy, from the moment she touched the blood-encompassed hatchet to now. When she and Jim made the unspoken agreement to protect the others, they bound themselves to a battle of murder and the loss of their morality; they became sin-eaters so that the others would not know the experience of taking a life with their own hands. And they are both losing the war.)

There is no greater relief when the two of them stumble onto the others, huddled behind a lone tree in the middle of a barren field, waiting for them-Bodhi has tears in his eyes, and Chirrut waits patiently, hands on his stick. Under his breath, he chants a prayer over and over again: "I am one with the Force, the Force is with me." Baze stands next to him, hand on his shoulder, a silent tower of comfort. Kay's look of surprise is folded into irritance (she can read Vulcans like the back of her hand, fingers near her heart once again, never leaving) as he remarks, "That's a lot of explosions for two people trying to survive."

Jim shrugs and commands, "We have to go back. There's nothing left-the field has been decimated. It's no use going this way."

"Will you not even tell us-"

"There was a bomb, a weapon," she hears herself snapping, trying not to let the weariness in her bones seep through (she's sure she fails). "We are not sure what it was, but we will inform you the details once we relocate to somewhere safe." Kay, for once, understands her desire for silence, drawing his mouth closed like a drawbridge to a castle of the Vulcan brain, logical and making no room for any other thinking.

As they trudge back to the cabin they left only half a day ago, she walks shoulder to shoulder with Jim, letting no weakness present themselves in their manners, spine straight and mouth grim. They pass through the dead fields and she wants to close her eyes and drown in the color of Tarsus IV's green dreams again, wants to live inside herself, wants to react the way she did when the governor first came to their town and murdered her mother and took her father away from her-sprawled under her mother's protective body, letting her close her eyes and ignore the phaser fire raging over her.

She doesn't let grief or guilt or anger rage through and consume her. It's then she understands the Vulcan strive for the control of emotions-control, not expulsion. She feels pain, becomes familiar with its shape and voice and grating injuries; she feels it, but she does not let it leave her mind and block her thinking. Controlling the pain of grief allows her to work, to survive another day-she cannot lose to herself, not when she has cheated death one too many times.

The release of tears will do nothing to help her, so she does not indulge herself, not even when they reach the log construction in the woods at the dead of night, sitting down crossed-legged across the small living space, and Jim tells the others what happened in the field, about the holopad Saw gave her. When she hands it to Jim, she feels nothing (shock, her brain tells her, registers into some dark recess of her mind that she never wants to look at), says nothing, does nothing but stare into the blue eyes that stole away her breath with shock and surprise, mixing awe and fear of the rawness in his gaze, ripping every part of her, bit by bit. His fire burns blue, at war with her green in a conversation carried across two milliseconds the others cannot possibly bear to understand.

" _Stardust,"_ the screen starts, showing Papa, dressed in dark grey garments, as if a prison outfit, and his light grey eyes, usually full of joy, are tired and weary; she almost falls in relief, exhaustion filling her veins in its poisonous lies-she is not safe yet; her father is still in the hands of a mass murderer. " _Jyn, my beloved…"_

He apologizes for leaving her, for not being able to save her mother; she wants to take away the holopad, yell at them all, tell them this is _private_ , and for _her_ only. She misses every other word because of her misdirected anger. (Wrong-she memorizes _every single word_ , drinking up the silk love of his voice, the hesitant fear in it, how very much _alive_ it is. It grounds her.)

It's too late-they know everything now, and she turns green, sick and embarrassed and angry; Jim stiffens beside her, coaxing her palm into his. It doesn't comfort her at all. (It does, on some level. But Jyn refuses to believe it.)

" _They're forcing me to build a weapon. They call it the Death Star."_ Papa shakes his head. " _There's no better name. And the day is coming soon, when it will be unleashed."_

She flinches (Saw's body, burned bones without a trace of attached flesh, the whites of his skeleton black and scarred with the licks of the flames), because her father may not know that it has already been unleashed.

" _I hope our friend Saw will be alive when you receive this. The treatment he has received has been...unkind. Kodos keeps him alive to show the others obedience-rather, the punishment for disobedience. However, he will escape and give you this, no matter what-how, you need not know._

" _But what you need to know is this-there is a place, not five miles east of the town we lived in. It is a military base-they call it Scarif. That is the only place where signals come in and out-Kodos has been repressing us here, telling us he has been searching for help. This is a lie: his guards hold this base together to stop any Starfleet officers from discovering what has happened here._

" _I have asked Saw and his friends to send a signal to Starfleet and take care of this-"_

Here, he closes his eyes in despair, and she knows what Papa will say. He needs her-he needs them. Considering the amount of raids they conducted and the men sent to kill them, she should have known (Jim most likely knew-he is Jim, after all) they knew of their band of children, fighting and killing to survive. (Monsters turning children into monsters; circumstances pushing them all to their roots of savagery and desperation.)

" _But in the chance he fails, Stardust… you and your friends-you must do this. To save us all._ " (Suddenly, Saw's words make sense, and she tastes the bitterness of rejection: Saw had told her he failed her father, not _her_ , not by leaving her alone. She wonders if he ever told Papa, and what he would say about it.)

When he opens his eyes, they are glass orbs of grief. " _Your mother and I will always love you, Jyn. No matter what."_

There is pain and grief and anger and disbelief in her heart, trapping her in a vicious cycle of abandonment and longing-he's leaving her again (the video will end soon-this is his goodbye, possibly _forever_ , depending on what Governor Kodos decides). How many has the weapon killed? How many has _he_ killed?

Saw was telling her the complete, absolute truth-this war of theirs, waged by famine and power and greed and inhumanity, darkens with every second the raging fire lives.

Then Papa's eyes soften, and his mouth wears the ghost of a sad smile. She can still see her mother's lips on his, smiling softly as she plays in the green fields of her home-stolen away, swept up by a monster in a white cape, the false face of glory and righteousness, an elected, trusted governor. " _Jyn, I love you. Please remember that everything I do, I do to protect you. Someday,"_ he starts, and his voice wavers and shatters her heart, and her breath hitches in an almost-sob ( _Don't, Jyn, the children-_ ) as he whispers, " _We will see each other again."_

The screen stops abruptly, footsteps echoing in the background as the sound cuts off, and Jim dismisses the others (scrambling off to bed, sleeping in their desired corners with each other, huddled to preserve warmth) as she stares at the holopad, blank. Empty. Nothing. A void of unforgiving oblivion, the darkness of a black hole, wrapping its vine of thorns and beauty around her, pulling her into its inconceivable grasp and cutting her deeply with its blades.

A cool hand rests on her shoulder, pulling her into reality, a tug-of-war, of sorts-she turns, and she meets empty yet calming blue eyes. Chirrut moves his hand from her shoulder to her Kyber crystal. It's only then she realizes she was clenching it in her palm, blood dripping down from where it cut through her skin. She cannot think of anything to say as he releases her grip, slipping his hand into it instead of a jagged crystal of comfort and pain, and leans down, putting his mouth over her ear. He chants his prayer until she mouths them back with a thank you, and she finds the phrase _I am one with the Force, the Force is with me_ replaying in her mind as Jim takes her hand and she follows blindly.

Jim sits next to her in the dark outside, breaths matching in the hot, terrifying air of misery. He's given her all of the blanket they stole days (weeks?) ago.

Because Jim is a man of action, not merely words, the boy reaches down and strokes her palm before intertwining his fingers into hers, threading his fears, anger, frustration, guilt, and grief into hers, sharing her pain as he squeezes in reassurance (he has his own share of fatherly problems; he understands).

She swallows. "I'm not used to people staying around when things go bad," she whispers (because he knows everything now, he knows who that was-no, who Saw Gerrera was _to her_ ; now she will never know who he truly was).

Her head fits perfectly in his shoulder; he turns his face down to see her hidden in his neck, approaching unconsciousness rapidly. "Welcome home."

* * *

Jyn opens her eyes-the sky is blue, a cerulean color, soft and hopeful; the field around her is emerald, grassy, beautiful. She hears her father call her name, and she turns around with a smile. "Papa?" she yells out-only to notice her surroundings have changed. A black sky, stars and galaxies and black holes and everything in the universe. It's beautiful, achingly and startlingly gorgeous.

It's terrifying-to not know the depths of her surroundings, the dangers lurking in the emptiness and vast serenity of space, even if this is where she belongs. She yells out for her Papa, hoping for an answer, for something. There's nothing.

Blinding panic and fear and adrenaline rushes into her veins-she needs to move, _now_ , _run_ -and her legs are locked in place, chained to the lavender-sea green gaseous space beneath her, wrapping around her legs like grapevines. It feels like there are edges of swords protruding from the mesmerising peacefulness of the cloudy matter, slicing her skin and letting blood drain and stain the skies a dark olive. It stings and aches and eats her alive; she thinks she screams as she feels her body forced down, violently yanked into a freezing, black vacuum pressing her down on all sides, suffocating and poisoning and killing her slowly-

 _Trust the Force, Jyn-_

 _Save the rebellion, save the dream…_

(A crumbling city, fallen on her knees, and a warm hand-Jim?-that pulls her up and cradles her in his shoulders-she's leaving Saw, Saw dies and dies again…)

 _I am one with the Force. The Force is with me. I am one with…_

 _Stardust, it must be destroyed, it must_

(A stormy platform. Blood on her hands.)

 _We will, we will, I promise, I_

(Even now, she knows, an impossible promise.

A wet, callused hand wrapping around her arm, pulling up and away, again...)

 _ **Lyra!**_

(Mama!)

 _Whatever I do, Jyn, Stardust, I do it to protect you. Remember that._

(A small stormtrooper toy lost in the grass, a small hole in the ground-dark, moist, unbearable; she'll never see her mother again, her Mama, the blaster-phaser?-fired into her heart, falling into the soil, and she runs and runs and runs...)

 _I am one with the Force, the Force is with me. I am one with the Force…Little sister._

 _I'll be there for you, Jyn. Cassian said I had to._

( _The time to fight is_ _ **now**_ _!_ )

 _Welcome home._

(Brown eyes, soft and pleading and desperate and strong, yet striking and bold like Jim's; brown leather jacket and the nature of a chameleon, slipping in and out of the crowd, an expert spy- _Captain_. His touch lingers even though his eyes only met hers for a moment.

She hears the crack of vertebrae and a blaster and she's screaming; _why, who, what-_ )

 _ **Cassian!**_

* * *

 **Like, review, comment, whatever you like.**

 **Hope you all are intrigued.**

 **If anything is inaccurate, please tell me so I can fix it.**

 **See you on the next update!~**


	2. end, again

**This is the ending, quite un beta-ed and not edited quite well. But, I most likely will not be active for a while (or maybe I will... who knows?) so here it is.**

 **Hope you've enjoyed the journey.**

* * *

"Jyn!"

She jerks awake.

Vaguely, she hears screaming. It takes her a moment to recognize her own.

She curses, clamping her mouth onto her hand, biting whatever sound off. She could have exposed them-she must have, because of her idiocy.

"Jyn. Jyn, look at me."

She doesn't realize her eyes have closed. She starts to shake. Even now, she fears him leaving her. _Emotional liability_ , that's what she is. Leading their kids headfirst into danger? It's impossible to do, no matter what her father says is at stake. Jim would choose the others over her.

It's what Saw did, because she was vulnerable. Because of her stupidity. Why shouldn't Jim?

She should leave. Go to Scarif and Krennic instead.

 _Krennic?_

"Jyn, Jyn, _stop_ , please."

She opens her eyes and stares into sky blue. "Cassian?"

"Who's Cassian?"

She blinks, struggling to remember her dream or the name or anything. "I don't know." Her vision starts to clear, bit by bit, and it reveals Jim shaking her, holding her in his arms.

"I don't know," she repeats, and Jim's concern radiates from himself. The other kids stand near the doorway of the cabin, huddled together. Some have tears in their eyes, and she feels her heart burst. "I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking, I-"

"What _happened_ , Jyn?" Jim grits his teeth, his concern quickly transforming into frustrated anger. She knows Jim-he wants the truth, nothing else. But she _doesn't_ know: all she remembers is a warm hand, a presence so familiar and fulfilling, and a name. _Cassian_.

Kay walks stiffly to her side. "Would you like to shut up? It would be greatly appreciated by us all and would minimize the chances of getting shot."

"Jyn," Jim growls, waiting for an answer. She puts her palm on his arm and accepts the criticism, the honesty. "I know, Kay. I'm sorry."

Kay sniffs his nose upward in a mechanical, swift movement. "I advise, Captain, that we move along before we are heard."

Jim shifts from a vulnerable expression of concern and frustration to a closed off mask of JT. A killer. There are times (especially these) that she hates him. "Alright. Let's go."

He offers her his hand and pulls her up firmly-she's happy he doesn't treat her like fragile glass. But that's all: he turns around, and she is struck with the fear of him leaving her, of another abandonment-

" _Wait_." He stops. "Jim, what about my father? Scarif?"

He turns his head slightly in her direction, but he won't dare catch her eye. He stares at the ground, back straight but shoulders burdened with this grand invisible weight. "You know we can't possibly do that."

"No, we can't. _Some_ of us can, but not all of us."

"And the others? You know this is suicide."

"Yes," she begins, tears in her eyes, teeth grinding so fiercely she feels them chip away at each other-Saw's sacrifice to bring her this, her father's deception against the governor. "And then? If not? We have a chance _now_ to act against them; we have a chance to live. If we don't take this, we _die_ anyway. We are all barely surviving-if we succeed, we can live again. This is our chance to make a real difference."

"We can't just knock on their front door, Jyn! We need a plan, we need arms, we need people-not starved _children_."

"We've done it before, haven't we? All we need to do is-"

Jim's eyes are wild and his mouth is open in biting anger. "We've raided towns with few guards at the towers. _Not_ an entire military compound guarding the _only_ source of contact to the outside world."

" _As I was saying_ , we don't need to raid the town-all we need to do is infiltrate it, get inside the compound, send a message, and get out. No harm done if they don't notice us." She's desperate. Jyn knows this is a stretch, that what their father has requested of them is not simple at all. But it's all she can propose to Jim. She can only hope he understands.

Jim closes his eyes, letting them flutter in exhaustion, the only crack in his mask. (It isn't the only crack, but it is the one he lets slip from his grasp in the moment, drowning in the desperation in her eyes.) "Jyn. I can't risk any lives for this. Not even ours."

(She thinks she glimpses at the lies beneath his eyes, in the feigned indifference and firm decision making, in the helplessness he feels for them both. He is just an expert in hiding these damn emotions beneath a mask-his uncle is proof of it.)

"And," he begins, the brightness of his blue a fading light, "You don't even know if your father is telling the truth, if he's been compelled to say these things. This could be a trap."

 _Compelled_ -tortured. She can't seem to swallow the fear this time, to compartmentalize it into herself and control her emotions. Her hands shake and Jim ignores it.

Logic. Emotions. In thirteen years, Jyn has battled between the two, as all men have. For now, she flexes her quivering hand, the one Jim has released, and curls it into a fist, hard and flaming at the world. At Jim. At herself, at Saw, at her father, at Kodos ( _Krennic_?). But Jim is right, to a certain degree: they cannot possibly take the tower because they lack the manpower to do so. However, they can alert Starfleet, send a message, a plea to the outside world. One of them can. With the name Cassian at the back of her mind, she swallows her pride and concedes for the moment, choosing logic to dictate where she will make her escape and achieve this colossal task her father has set before her-on her own.

* * *

The first town they come across next, she knows what to do. It only takes them two days to find one: a desolate, tattered collection of tanned stone houses, splattered with blood and death. (She thinks it reeks of _him_ , the governor, the despicable coward obsessed with eugenics.)

They pair up and enter the different houses, planning to reconvene in the center square (where the decaying bodies lay) and present their scarce findings.

Ever since Alex died, Jyn had always elected to go alone. Today, Jim joins her, shoulder to shoulder, as if begging for forgiveness. His touch sends a rush of electrical shock and longing hidden in the shiver of her spine. She breathes, acknowledging him, but not speaking-she thinks she hasn't spoken since the day of her dream, when she woke and she learned the name Cassian.

They enter the first house on the corner, stolen phasers ready in their hands. The wallpapers are plain but for the fact that blood has tainted the yellow hue of the background; the insides are ransacked of life and water and food. It seems hopeless, but she and Jim scavenge it anyway. It's what they are: the detritivores of the society, the ones who scrape the dead of the dead and use it for their survival. It's what they have become.

She steps inside the kitchen, sweeping her phaser across her sight. Jim does the same, and approaches the door of what seems to be the pantry, motioning at her to follow him in. She is a few steps behind him when he swings open the door, and a blur of blue and black crashes atop them, scattering their phasers away from their reach. Their weight nearly crushes Jyn, and she scrambles from the bottom of the pile, pushing them out of her way, crawling across the floor.

There's a boy on top of Jim, wrestling him to the ground, his knees on Jim's back, his elbows on his arms, hands pushing Jim's face onto the jolting coolness of the hardwood floor. There's a knife in his hand, curved at the edge and silver at the handle-it's poised to attack Jim's vulnerable neck.

There's no time to think. Her hands are on his neck before she does, and she throws her body into his, letting the boy break her fall. She's on him, her body covering his, arms and knees over his back, keeping him down; she hears him snarl in response and he attempts to throw her body back. He arches, and she is unprepared for a bucking, kicking animal (she should have been-it's what she would have done) with a weapon in his hand. One moment she is on the culprit she is trying to subdue, the next, she's flying toward the yellow-red wallpaper, back banging against it and jolting her spine with a groan.

She slides down, and as her vision clears of the black dots of pain and confusion, she sees Jim rise up, fists ready for battle. The other boy turns toward them-her sitting, catching her stolen breath from the impact, and Jim in front of her body, knees bent forward in a threat-and they finally have a full view of his face.

She chokes back a scream, gasping in shock. The boy is old-perhaps as old as them-and in place of his left eye is a gaping hole of infection, blood, and nerve fibers, dangling out of his socket in crimson fingers, reaching down to caress his cheek-what's left of it. From the boy's left temple to the bottom of his chin, his face is charcoal and infected, burnt skin. The mass of red flesh clump around the dark splotches of his burns. Her heart twists, but she cannot her eyes, captivated with disgust and fascination.

She can see Jim's face from the corner if her eye, morphing into one of pity and bitterness. Their guest, it seem, appreciates none of their sentiments: he growls in response, grumbling at them in a lowly, savage manner, hand clenching the small blade so desperately his knuckles are white with tension. "Don't look at me!"

A boy turned into a monster-Jim's eyes speak more than he can bear; she can see recognition in his eyes, the resemblance between the boy's physical scars and JT's psychological marks. Jyn can see him turning from defensive to approachable, from warrior to leader (though often they're the same trait). Jim raises his hands and straightens his spine, bearing the title of captain perfectly. "We aren't here to hurt you, but we need to be sure you won't hurt us."

The scoff he receives brings her back to her own, back to a black, claustrophobic cave with damp dirt beneath her fingers, clumping into her hair, and a warm hand on her shoulder ( _Cassian_ , she thinks; _No, Jim_ , she corrects). "Why should I believe you?" the boy asks, his voice grating and harsh. Jim tilts his head and steps closer, prompting the boy to yell, "Don't come any closer," his voice almost breaking with exhaustion and trepidation.

"Tom?" Jim asks, and she isn't sure whether she stands for the fear in his voice, for how it shivers in the air, for how he even knows the teenager, or for how close he is to a boy whose maimed face expresses not only his pain and bitterness, but his danger. There are so many crimes a man pushed to desperation can commit to survive another day. They should know. "Tom Leighton?"

In less than a moment from hearing his name, Tom lifts his blade up against the light streaming in a beam from the narrow window beside the kitchen doorway, pointing its curve towards Jim. "How the hell do you know my name? Answer carefully, ya bastard. I know how to throw these things." He seems to ignore how afraid he sounds, projecting the facade of fearlessness and stubborn danger through his body language: his body is turned sideways, and aside from the knife he holds, his leg is thrust forward and ready to leap, the left side of his face the only side shown in his stance, painting a menacing picture.

But they're just children. And it wasn't supposed to be this way. ( _Save the dream...Save Tarsus IV…_ )

( _How, Saw?_ , she asks the ghost behind her. _How, Mama?_ , she asks her beaming crystal.)

(She receives no answer.)

"It's me, Tom. Jim." He inches forward, as if the blade beckoned him into the light illuminated the silver glint of threat. "Jim Kirk-don't you remember me?"

She hovers behind them, observing two friends meet after a period of grief, destruction, and genocide-a period that still continues even during and after the reunion. But it's then she truly believes in Jim's dedication for others, in his love not only for his skill of self-hatred and condemnation, but for his friends.

She hears Tom gasp and lower his blade only slightly, turning his face to look at Jim with his one good eye; she sees his eye shifting and struggling to take his presence in, blinking back tears of hope and confusion. As recognition brightens his eyes, Tom drops the blade, burning and marking his palm with its imprint from clutching the weapon too powerfully. The boy quivers with guilt and agony and hopelessness and burden, and Jim catches him as he falls to his knees, sobbing into his neck, dried blood scraping against it. "They killed them, Jim. They killed them all. _He_ killed them all-my brothers, my family-everyone-just _gone_."

She watches, Jim a rock of comfort for the storm of water flooding from Tom's grief, chipping away at him and his sanity, destroying him slowly until she sees a silver sliver of a tear glinting against the dying light from the narrow shaft leak from the corner of the rock's eye.

For Tom, she can see this in his eye: he will never rest until he personally murders Kodos the Executioner, a murderous, hazel flame lit solely for the death of the governor.

* * *

She waits until night, observing Tom with Vulcan senses. The darkness falls, and they huddle in a cave, the little ones asleep. It's her watch. Jim closes his eyes, but she knows he's never asleep-at the most, he rests lightly in a fitful dream, but never a deep slumber. She crawls cautiously away, proud of her abilities of agile, silent movement. Tom's eye is closed, chest heaving in and out, trapped in a nightmare. She can see the restlessness of his eye beneath the eyelid, shifting and searching in the dark. She can only imagine what he sees. What he remembers.

She can only wish that she does-a flash of blue and the warmth of a blinding, piercing heat enveloping her. She blinks it away and puts a hand on Tom's mouth, muffling his jerking protests and covering his snarls. He's about to lunge when she touches her finger to her lips and slowly withdraws her palm from his mouth. He seems angry, annoyed, distrusting. She would be too, she realizes.

Jyn gestures the boy outside, where the stars have illuminated the sky in constellations of explorations and the unknown. She steers clear away from Jim's prone body in his light sleep. Tom notices her aversion and stiffens beside her, suspicious of any motivation-any beside the Captain's.

"Well? What do you want?" he whispers, but the tone is equivalent to a beast on the verge of explosion.

"Scarif," Jyn says, refusing to submit to his fierceness. "Where is it?"

Recognition and fear flashes in the hazel of his eye, shifting the colors and mixing in the reluctance. "Why? Why would anyone want to go back there?"

"So you came from there?" she demands, ignoring the desperation and quivering volume of Tom's voice. "Tell me how to get there. Now."

Tom is shaking his head, his entire body rejecting her request, and he's repeating himself over and over, "No, I won't go back, I won't … I escaped him, no, no…"

She nearly groans, disgruntled, biting her split lip. "Tom, this is a matter of whether any of us survive this. Survive _him_. You _have_ to tell me." Her father's sacrifice, Saw's death, the weapon raging across the planet, destroying everything in its path-if Tom does not show her the way, they lose everything. She loses everyone (even Jim).

"You don't understand," Tom seems to plead; for what, she has no idea-there is nothing she can give him, spare him for his trouble. She has no leverage to make him tell her, and she hasn't yet threatened him. Yet-the boy's grievances are pushing her patience. "He has a weapon, something that can kill the planet. He's already wiped off half of this forsaken rock; can you imagine what he'll do if he finds us?"

"Can you imagine what he'll do if we do not stand up to him? If we don't fight back? We can do it, without him knowing: infiltrating Scarif is more than phasers and soldiers."

"You don't understand," Tom repeats, shaking his head once more, fervently begging Jyn not to pursue this. "How do you think _this_ happened to me?"

Tom gestures to his face and she feels her insides chill and halt its endless, meticulous churning. " _He_ did this for sport. For punishment. For a lesson. Scarif is where it all began, where they all are-the first ones chosen to live. It's where Kodos is, where the prisoners are kept to keep order, where all the weapons are kept and developed. He said they were looking for a way to plant more crops, to grow more food-he's a damn liar-they all are-they're gonna find us and kill us all, don't you see? Don't you see?"

" _ **What**_ are you doing?"

Jim. Awake and filled to the brim with disbelief and betrayal. "Jyn?" he questions, and she can hear him grind his teeth in a rage.

"I'm leaving to Scarif," she answers, chin up in rebellion, ready for his rebuke. Green clashes with blue, a war fought in mind and word. "With or without you. Tom here is about to tell me how to get there."

The mentioned boy only says no, replays the negative multiple times to emphasize his adamant position. "Scarif means absolute death-a slow, monitored death, no matter who you are. I'd recommend dying the quicker way. It's easier like that."

"Listen to me, Jyn; we don't have the luxury to fight, to risk everyone's lives like this. We don't have the time, the resources, the information."

" _He_ has the information. It doesn't matter-time is running out for us either way. We have to take a stand, _now_."

Jyn turns to Tom. She knows _exactly_ how to manipulate him, to persuade him into taking her. It is only logical-the boy cherishes his family and despises Kodos more than anyone. "Think of your brothers, Tom. Your parents. Would they want you to run away?"

Tom shakes in her grasp, her hands firmly square upon his shoulders. "They _told_ me to, wouldn't they want me to live?"

"You're not living, are you? We're all dying slowly, Tom. You must take us there-to the lion's den. It is only logical, if you want Kodos to be punished for all the wrong he's committed. Don't you?"

Beside her, Jim grinds his teeth. "She's right, Tom."

Jyn muffles her sound of shock, desperately relieved Jim has conceded. She could not have handled them not talking, or her leaving him in the dark, to find her father when he could never find his.

Tom, on the other hand, doesn't bother muffling his sob, shifting his eye from Jyn to Jim in a frantic manner. "Alright, I can take you to Scarif. But I won't step one foot inside it-I can't-he'll see me right away, I'll jeopardize your entire mission."

Jim nods understandingly and she releases the boy's thin shoulders, sharpened with starvation and torture. "Thank you, Tom," she tells the boy, breath heavy in the twilight, exhausted with effort.

Jim doesn't look at her as he leads Tom back into the cave, leaving her struggling to catch her tears in the soft light of Tarsus IV's moon, fists clenched in preparation for what they are proposing: war.

* * *

A confrontation with Jim is inevitable. As soon as he exits the opening of the small den, she is waiting for him by the fire, not wanting to prolong the wait, the simmering of distrust. Trust certainly does go both ways, and what she was attempting to do tonight betrayed him.

"You went behind my back," Jim starts. He attempts to hide the pain behind his eyes, the utter betrayal he feels, but she sees beyond the freezing ice of his glare.

"Jim," she begins, not knowing what she will say-beg for forgiveness? Fight back with the same amount of hostility?

"No," he growls. "You damn hypocrite, how _dare_ you?"

" _Hypocrite_?" she rallies back, flames licking around her finger, warming her bitterness (if only it melted ice).

"What were you going to do? Go alone?" He's hurt, so, so hurt; she should have expected this from the boy whose father died, whose mother left him to be off-planet for years on end, whose uncle broke him until he nearly drove a car off a cliff, whose brother abandoned him for adventure and freedom, something he has searched for what it seems like centuries. ( _You had no right to leave us alone!_ rings in her mind like a bell tolling for her death.)

"I would have, yes. You left me no choice." (It's a half-lie, she knows; if she had gone to Jim, they would have agreed on a compromise-it's just the captain in him that directs them toward peace.) He sounds so condescending she burns, the yellow fire famished, devouring her fingertips.

"No choice? There's always a choice. I just agreed for us to go to Scarif. You could have talked to me, told me your plan-" (He seems to think she's incapable, that she's an invalid-why is she trusting him, again?) He doesn't understand any of her actions, her words; he doesn't understand the uselessness, the emptiness she feels.

"You would have said no! I need my father, Jim. _You_ don't know what that feels like!"

The air stills around them, tension so palpable it settles around her tongue and wafts into her nostrils, the scent almost as heavy as the stench of rotting corpses. She realizes her mistake immediately, hand pushing at her lips. She wishes she could swallow the words in the atmosphere, trade them for truths instead of the ignorance she spewed, but it's too late. "Jim-"

He turns away from her abruptly, a sudden, sharp movement that speaks more than she can bear. "Jim, I didn't-" (But whoever she's turned him into, the boy in front of her isn't Jim anymore-his name is JT, a savage, ruthless leader of a band of children descending in the midst of the murders of four thousand colonists.)

"Leave at dawn. Tom will lead you to Scarif. I'll lead the kids in the opposite direction."

"Jim, _please_ -"

"Goodbye, Jyn."

(Why is she trusting him?)

(Because he is the only one who has not left her yet.)

* * *

"Stardust. Stardust." Someone shaking her awake. Her hair in two dangling braids. "It's time to go, now, Jyn."

 _Remember, Jyn; everything I do, I do to protect you._

Brown eyes melting, shifting, shaping into some affection of curiosity and intrigue. ( _Cassian_.)

Somewhere, the Kyber crystal burns with equal emotion, with a hint of bitterness and judgement.

 _I've been in this fight since I was six years old!_

 _Well, then you're no better than a stormtrooper._

Dripping tears or rainwater, the foul stench of sweat and blood, draining away the heartbeat beneath her fingers-the callused hand pulls her away again, and it is black night and black day and no hope.

 _Rebellions are built on hope!_

-escaping her lips, but she means none of it and yet she believes all of it. She only needs her father's revenge to be fulfilled, for her father to be avenged-Papa…

 _Jyn, look at you…_

Rigid hands, slimy with blood and rain, holding her cheeks in his palms…

 _I have so much to tell you._

Darkness-Papa?

* * *

"Jyn."

She wakes, startled and yet relieved. Her mouth shapes the word _Papa_ and she knows, by the understanding in Jim's eyes that her instincts are correct. The blue has melted into a watery yet firm gaze that makes her whisper his name in anguish and worry at the tension between them. She can't-not again-she can't be alone again. (Then the red plomeek soup will drown her in the brown fields of death.) "I shouldn't have-"

"I know." (He does know. This is Jim, the selfless captain who loves so deeply and so broadly that his soul is immeasurably expansive and captivating, the boy who can inspire such fellowship in children simply by expressing and fulfilling his will. The lost boy whose father died and brought his mother down with him, on Earth but a living hell.) "I'm sorry, too, for the record."

A sad smirk on the corners of his mouth, quirking softly at the edges, tells her it's alright. His knees are on the ground and his arms are both sides of her, his face leaning into hers, torso twisted to accommodate his view from her left. She doesn't deserve him, she thinks, despite all he's done as JT. He thinks he's irredeemable, that he is guilty for every loss, but it's impossible to think that way-she is just as responsible as he is. (A little Orion girl with ginger hair, laugh bubbling into her ears.)

Without thinking, she places her hand on his cheek, smoothing down the rough edges of his thinning blond hair, shaking the dirt out. "I am more sorry than you, Captain. After all, it is only logical that you would understand." She sounds like her mother, she realizes as Jim's smile deepen and his eyes grow lighter, relieved of a burden, if only for a moment. (She wonders if this is- _was_ how her mother felt when she drawled in a Vulcan tone with her father.)

She's never trusted anyone like this before. (She doubts she ever will.)

"Besides...if you're really going to do this, I want to help," Jim confesses, eyes so fierce and fixated that she has to swallow to answer. They've both done things they're ashamed, that they never want to confront; everything, they did to survive-for their kids, for themselves. It would be foolish to not take this risk, to not stand against a murderer; it would be foolish to die in the dust, only for the Force to send them somewhere else less deserving.

"Are you with me?" she asks, mouth leaning close as she whispers next to his cheek.

"All the way," he says, as if the answer was obvious from the start. (As if he would never leave her.)

"Good," she whispers, and he drops back down on the ground with a thud, his arm still around her as they fall asleep, eyes closed and bodies warm next to the dying fire.

* * *

The next morning, Jim is gone. The ground next to her is cold. (It reminds her of Saw, of how he left after warming her to sleep, of how she was left in dust and ashes, and of how she forced herself to become a phoenix, rising from nothing and becoming a monstrous, flying beast.)

There's no shortage of panic bubbling inside her, but she suppresses it, forcing herself to stand up. She whirls around at the sight of a pointed ear to find Kay staring her down, hands on his hips. "Kay."

"I'll be there for you, Jyn," he says sincerely without preamble. She's almost impressed. "The captain said I had to." ( _Cassian_ said you had to, she says in her mind; she pushes the hallucinations-delusions-dreams? Signs from the Force?-aside.)

To this, she raises an eyebrow, nearly charmed with Kay's tricks. "Alright, then, Kay. Thanks."

He doesn't hear her word of gratitude-he's already walking off to where the others have assembled with morning berries they picked the day before.

"He means you're welcome," a clear voice rings in her left ear, a hand held in front of her, offering her two berries, dried and measly, but still oddly satisfying as she greets them into her mouth with a smile. (Satisfying, then the hunger churns once more and she feels as if she will never be satisfied, not with flesh, ever again.)

She thanks Jim, turning around and observing his boyish grin (tinged with just a hint of sorrow), and allows herself to smile back. In moments like these, moments where famine and murder and slaughter are overshadowed, though only barely, with a sense of unity in their small family and the actions of love as they stand and eat together, no matter how scarce food is or malnourished they are, it is easy to forget the past, the present, and the future, and live and love as they are.

But then, they go. Jim tells all of them their plans, that they need to break into Scarif before they all die, before Kodos kills them all. He warns them of the danger, of how death is inevitable; he offers them to chance to leave before they reach the lion's den. None of them do-not even Bodhi, who stares defiantly in the face of Jim's grim stance, pouting his lips.

They march to their death, barefoot and dying and broken, whether completely shattered or cracked at the edges; they march together. It is what family does.

* * *

Scarif is a land of mystery and intrigue: barbed wire lines the compound, hidden within the heart of the forest. When Tom catches sight of the compound, he pales and his face reddens with exertion as he tries to breathe. Jim catches his outstretched arm and muffles his screams, whispering in his ear to stop the panic.

It's no use. There's a rustle in the woods around them and Jim is forced to order Kay to pinch the bundle of nerves in Tom's shoulder. He drops like a rock, the last emotion in his eye before he goes down an expression of an intense mixture of bitterness and terror.

Jyn is closest to the soft sound of leaves hitting flesh: Jim leads with Tom in the front, and she is assigned to guard their backs; when the nose of a phaser appears in the desert plant beside her, she slams the butt of it into the opponent's neck, awarded by a soft grunt of protest and several gags, the soldier attempting to breathe. Kay quickly approaches to finish the job, and another falls prey to the ruthless Vulcan pinch.

The sixteen of them watch through large hanging leaves from the forest around them with wonder at the electrical fence that separates them from both death and freedom-the citadel rises higher than the tallest tree, as Tom had promised with a map of what he remembers, and the other grey buildings are stoutly made compared to it. The communications tower has an elevator that will transport them to the top level, where the antenna that is able to send messages is located. While she, Jim, and Kay send a distress signal to Starfleet, or whatever ship around them, the others will lead a diversion with Chirrut and Baze at the center of it.

Jim takes her wrist, startling her at his cold touch and his thin, wiry fingers, strong to the touch. (It reminds her of Saw's grip as he lay dying before he burst into flames.) He nods at her, and to the others, he looks fearless, determined (like JT). To her, he's anything but: the fact that he feels the need to touch her, to feel her beating pulse in the veins of her wrist screams at her that he is nervous, terrified, and uncertain. She maneuvers her hand until their fingers meet and their hands fold together, and squeezes. She feels so, so close to her father, as if she can hear the breath from his lips running across her neck as they embrace and he calls her _Stardust_ and she can feel the roughness of his beard, the stubbles sharp against her cheek as he tells her he loves her. A sudden twinge in her heart tells her that Galen Erso is already dead; a second wonders what it is like to be Jim, without a father, constantly living under the dark, heavy shadow of his legacy.

She turns back, clenching the phaser she retrieved from the unconscious guard. She feels compelled to say something, because Jim or no Jim, she is the one who led them to their deaths today, who led them to fight against an evil Empire which has killed and slaughtered innocents to exert their power in order to "save" the meaningful ones, the ones who deserve to live. But that's horrible, inhumane. No life is worth more than another. Life is worth everything and nothing in the span of however many years you are granted; it is a priceless artifact people kill for and die for.

Words spill out of her mouth, overflowing with hope ( _Rebellions are built on hope!_ ) and love (something they needed to be reminded about in the slaughterhouse they now all live in, in the impossible task they are about to make possible). "Saw Gerrera used to say one fighter with a sharp stick and nothing left to lose can take the day. They have no idea we're coming. They have no reason to expect us. If we make it to the ground, we'll take the next chance. And the next. On and on until we win… or the chances are spent."

She's close to tears now-they're only thirteen, they're only children, and they're ready to make war with a powerful enemy they have been struggling to run away from since a fateful day months ago, killing their families and friends and their innocence. But this-this was inevitable. (Death always is, no matter what life you live and no matter what world you live in. Jyn Erso, she feels in the heavy weight of her soul, has known that across all the lives the Force has propelled her to.)

She feels Jim's hand in hers for the entirety of her words, a presence so welcomed by her that she cherishes the weight of his hand clenching hers, though it nearly breaks it with his force. When she closes her mouth, lips dry from emotion, shocked at the sheer power of the fourteen faces before her, at the strength of their unity as they all fight tears of fear and exhaustion, she drops Jim's hand like it scorches her skin, and moves forward.

* * *

She can hear Jim vaguely give directions to Melshi (the young warrior, responsible for overcharging many phasers during their rebellion's countless raids) and Pao (Melshi's partner-in-crime) to ensure the efficiency of the distraction and the extraction of the people living inside the wire cage, but she blocks the words out as she sits, arms around her knees, deep in thought. She shifts her focus entirely on her father-nervousness bubbling inside of her, thoughts of murder and torture floating on an endless loop, her father's words compelling her to save them all when all she wants is to save him. ( _I have so much to tell you_.)

A hand on her shoulder-she looks up into Baze's harsh face, grim yet hopeful eyes encouraging her. "Good luck, _Cie cie_."

(There was a day, weeks ago, when Chirrut tripped across a stray tree root when they were running away. Baze had panicked, and she was the one who carried him miles and miles away from Kodos's men. They both expressed their gratitude by teaching her a bit of Mandarin.)

Her mouth twitches at the corners into a smile in return for his kindness and Chirrut appears beside her, hand at hers, clutching the Kyber crystal once again. He whispers his prayer in her ear before they walk away, ready to start their diversion.

Little Bodhi resides in Baze's arms, yelling, "Go!" excitedly (or perhaps nervously) as Baze bounces him energetically, a pure grin on his face. The other children-Melshi, Pao, Helen, Poe, Thelev, Mila, Rini, Shora, Vani, T'Leia, Stelor-follow them, battle-ready and yet so thin, malnourished, and terrified of what lies beyond. She is so proud of them, their purity brightening the hell on Tarsus IV.

A hand outstretched to her-one look, and she knows it's Jim. She takes it, allowing him to help her up, and stands alongside the Captain and the robotic Vulcan. Chin up, she remembers the stubborn face she placed as a mask when she met the governor long ago (just before they dragged her father away and shot her mother with a phaser), and uses it again, fists clenched and ready for a fight (no matter what the cost-her sanity, her guilt, her life; the list goes on).

She turns to Jim to see he has also adopted the mask he always wears: the seemingly impenetrable facade of the Captain. Kay is, as usual, as expressionless as ever to the non-Vulcan eye; to her, she sees the cracks of fear and apprehension written in the arch of his eyebrows and the corners of his lips.

"Let's go," Jim says, and they march, as they have been for the length of their adventures, toward their deaths.

* * *

A sight to marvel at: three children crawling, barefoot in the mud, toward a deadly fence. One of them, with startling blue eyes, uses a blade to cut through the metal carefully, purple sparks dancing across the broken wire, threatening the usefulness of his hands.

Another just beside it: thirteen children running across the field of yellow and blood, feet cracked and callused and some bleeding freely, dirt smeared across their faces as if they were one with the planet itself, one with Tarsus IV in all its former glory; they run toward the fence, stopping just a few feet away, and throw whatever they can with it. One leaves an overcharged phaser with practiced ease (a weapon available only by theft), and the cycle repeats at another part of the wire.

Observing these moments, Jyn smiles, and for the first time since her mother died, feels freedom like nothing before through rebellion and defiance, in the name of something good and right and honorable. (She's always wanted to play hero, and for the moment, she forgets about the blood on her hands when she did not know whether it was from her or Saw or the people she has slaughtered to survive, just like Kodos- _Krennic_ himself.)

* * *

It doesn't take long for the wire to break free, revealing a circular hole through the fence for them to crawl through. Jim signals them in: Kay goes first, phaser at the ready; she follows, and Jim crawls through last, guarding the back.

Scarif seems deserted, desolate, though it is a city of itself. There are dirt roads and grey houses, more resembling prisons than homes, in neatly stacked rows, with the roads crossing between them in perfect lines. Towering above them all is the citadel: a grey hawk watching over its prey, waiting for one of the people below to fall and be deemed unworthy. Then it would eat and reap its reward. Its high stories reach into the sky in a large spike, where a large satellite dish resides, along with a communications center connected via a thin metallic bridge. The building contains workers who know of Kodos's intentions and somehow, in a twisted view, support him, as well as data files, piling atop one another. None record the famine, the fungus that destroyed her green fields, or the genocide-this is enough to enflame her rage.

They stand, observing the obstacle above them blocked only by a dirt road and fifty feet of dead, barren land, infected with an organism far beyond Kodos's imagination and intellect.

Kay clears his throat, and with his hands behind his back in perfect posture, says, "There is a ninety-seven point six percent chance of failure."

Jyn nearly groans, but covers it with a fierce smile. "What is the statistical likelihood of me shooting you in the face?"

Jim snorts and replies for Kay, "Zero percent."

She scoffs at the same time Kay says, "How did you know, Captain?"

"They won't be expecting us-the others have set fire to all sides of the fence, so they won't know where to go," she interrupts. "Their men will be dispersed. Let's go."

This time, Jim leads them as she guards their backs, all three of them swaying their phasers left and right, set to stun. The yellow grass tickles at her ankles, but the bottom of her feet feel nothing. The pain of walking barefoot across scorching rocks and sharp roots have numbed her nerves; the sensation, once aching and back-breaking, has long been gone for her and Jim, who she suspects has been blind to the pain for longer than her. The mud mixes with sweat between her toes and cakes her foot, and the dirt road, as they run across it, brings dust into her eyes. She shakes her head, clearing up her vision and letting her hair run wildly across her forehead.

They reach the door of the back entrance with ease, most guards at the front or near the fence-they can hear the commotion and phaser blasts, screams in every direction. According to Tom's map, he escaped through the back in the night with a blade he stole from one of the guards, with the elevator adjacent to it. Jyn touches the black steel of the locked door; she finds it's cold to the touch in the midst of the harsh summer. There's a holopad next to it, the blue light of the screen shining in Kay's face as he reflects it. "This requires a handprint from authorized personnel in order to gain entry," he advises, to which Jim grimly nods. He motions to Jyn to walk around to the other side to search for a guard to use, both hands on his phaser as he rounds the corner of the citadel.

She follows and-she sees him. The familiar stance of her father, spine straight and at attention, hands folded in front of him, shoulders broad. He wears a grey jumpsuit, like the one in the hologram, and he looks relatively unharmed. But his head is down and his arms look like he will fall apart soon, as if the heaviness of the weapon he's helped create is poured onto him, weighing him down with its tremendous potential.

There are scientists around him, but he steps forward to the man standing above them all, head high, hands folded behind his back, furious and a murderous glint in his eyes.

She has only seen him once in her life, but once was enough-the white billowing cape behind him, Kodos ( _Krennic_ , she hisses desperately with the arsenal of names from her dreams floating in her mind) screams in her father's face, "Well? It was you, wasn't it?"

"It was me. They have nothing to do with it. Spare them." The field is quiet, and the group is at least hundreds of meters away, but she can still hear their screams of protest as her father begs for mercy, but Kodos orders his soldiers behind him to fire into the line of scientists, staining their red coats with blood from the phaser fire. She gasps, and she moves to run, but Jim holds her back, arms around her torso; he fiercely whispers, "Jyn, don't, you _cannot_ engage, you'll ruin the entire mission. Do you understand?"

Her father balls his fists up, and he screams in agony and guilt, "Kodos, you'll never win. This planet will fall as you will, and it'll be gone to ashes because of you!"

"Is the weapon complete? Will it start the process of succession?" She's struggling against Jim's grip, nearly yelling, "Papa!", but Jim muffles the movement and her screams. She knows it's foolish, and she nearly sags into Jim's grasp because of the futility of it all, but she wants to see her father again, so she stands instead, elbowing Jim in the ribs and standing her ground, waiting for the right time to move in and save her father as she and Jim observe the interaction from the wall of the citadel.

"Yes, but you will never be able to yield it and control it to stop its destruction! You must not use it," her father pleads.

Then she sees Kodos's wretched, crooked smile and she knows something is wrong-that something will go wrong. His hand twitches, and he reaches behind his back. (No-she sees everything all at once, from her mother's dying body to Saw's infected wound-) She can't sit still any longer; she runs toward them and yells, "Papa!" but it's too late-the phaser appears and a shot pierces through his chest and Galen Erso falls to the yellow-red ground.

She hears screaming. (It's her own, as usual.)

Her feet are moving, but she is somewhere else, somewhere on a wet tarmac with fire around her, almost scorching her with its flames, crawling to the body of her father.

She doesn't see Kodos-Krennic-approach her, but she feels the heat of an explosion near her right side, ahead of her, bringing her to the present. Kodos flinches away, nearly killed by the flames, but is pulled away by his underling. "Sir, you have to leave-the citadel is the safest point of Scarif." His eyes are on hers as he leaves the crime scene, scared more for his own life than a stray, dirty girl who looks hollow and weak with tears racing down her cheeks.

She doesn't care. Cannot possibly care. She maneuvers around the flame, turning back around to check on Jim: he's breathing heavily and he's lost a phaser-the explosion was his, then, from overcharging it.

She reaches her father, struggling to breathe, mouth overrun with blood. "Papa, Papa, it's me, Jyn," she sobs as she kneels down on him, hand on his wound (but it's no use).

His eyes wander, flitting across the vast wasteland of despair until they land on her, and it's as if he smiles despite gurgling on crimson blood. "Jyn...Stardust."

"I've seen your message," she tells him desperately, willing him to stay alive. "The hologram, I've seen it."

"You and your friends...you must…" He can barely speak, so she finishes his sentence for him.

"Yes, yes, we will. We'll get help. We all will."

His hand reaches her cheek as he whispers, "I've so much to tell you."

Something breaks when his hand falls, when his eyes close, when his heart stops bleeding below her hands and the blood never halts its flow. Something does, and it all comes rushing forward-

 _Stardust….everything I do, I do to protect you, remember that._

 _Yes, Papa._

(Two braids dangling from her head, a green field and a lost stormtrooper toy, and-)

 _ **You'll never win!**_

(But Mama falls to the floor and she has to run, run, run until where she needs to hide; but where's Papa? They took him, they-)

 _My child. Come. We have a long ride ahead of us._

(Saw leaves her in a bunker with nothing but a blaster when she's sixteen. She moves on, but never heals the aching pain of abandonment in her heart.)

 _I like to think he's dead. It's easier that way._

(Captain Cassian Andor, a man fueled by Rebellion and the almighty cause, all too knowing of the morals he has betrayed, self-deprecating, protective, lonely...he looks at her with disdain written in his eyes, with such condescending nature that she hates him when she first sees him.)

 _I've never had the luxury of political opinions._

(Kay is a reprogrammed droid, but the voice remains the same in its tacit disapproval. How charming.)

 _They call it the Death Star; there is no better name for it._

(A planet-killer borne of her father's mind. A weapon crafted to kill and exert the Empire's power. Her father speaks to her in a hologram, from far, far away; it breaks the walls she's fought hard to build and rebuild.)

 _Save the Rebellion...Save the dream. Go!_

(In every variant of her life, Saw leaves and dies after giving her Galen Erso; this time, it is in a desert bunker as fire ravages and destroys him. There is nothing left of Saw Gerrera-nothing but the ruins of a holy city, the ashes of his legacy.)

 _Jyn, we have to go; Jyn!_

(Always, always, the warm hand pulling her away to save her before grief swallows her up in its entirety... _Cassian.)_

 _Jyn, Stardust...I've so much to tell you._

(The rainy platform, the scent of death and blood, Papa on the tarmac-)

 _ **Jyn!**_

"Jyn, Jyn, we have to go, now! He's gone, Jyn, come on!"

"No, no, I won't leave him-Cassian, I won't leave him, not again-"

"Cassian? Jyn, it's Jim. Jyn, come on, Jyn…"

 _Jim_. Jim's hands are around her elbow, pulling her upwards as she staggers along. Kay is ahead of them, dragging the body of a dead scientist towards the door-she feels bile rise around her throat when she realizes she's grateful they didn't use her father's body. There's salty tears and sweat running into her mouth, and she sobs with exhaustion.

Papa is dead, just like before-somewhere, sometime, before, with someone named Cassian; though there is no Cassian here, she feels as though he never left her side. Instead, Jim is; he's shouting in her face, and his palms hold her cheeks, and she can't hear what he's saying over the roaring of her veins.

A hard slap wakes her into reality- "You're going into shock," Jim yells. "Jyn, we have to do this. For him."

For Papa. Galen Erso dies again and again, but the mission must also be completed over and over. Jyn nods, raising her hand to clench Jim's. Her eyes are red with grief, but she swallows the pain down and, with her other hand, holds the crystal lovingly in her grasp.

Both her parents are gone, one with the Force. The crystal is heated with the presence of not only her mother, but her father as well.

"I am one with the Force, the Force is with me," she whispers, closing her eyes. She can almost see her mother's ears tinted green as her father embraces her in the Force; she can almost see the red plomeek soup-colored fields restore itself to the jade of her eyes; she can almost see her parents smile as they walk away from her.

When she breaks away from her reverie and into the stricken land of sorrow about her, she is ready to fight: while Mama and Papa have found peace, she has not, and fury enrages her to persevere until what they must do is finished.

Green clashes with blue, and instead of pity, she finds determination, sorrow, and her own fiery resentment.

* * *

Tom was right-the elevator is next to the back door; he did, however, fail to mention the large warehouse-like area of the citadel and the hundreds of members scattered across the building, examining test tubes and chemicals, dressed in white lab coats. Her jaw drops at the sight and her eyes sweep the room (is _this_ her father's legacy-a deadly weapon designed to restore the colony's soil through its death?), until the first worker spots them and yells an angry, " _Hey_!"

"Come on!" Jim growls, grabbing her arm and dragging her along, Kay running to the elevator on her right side.

Shots blast out from the opposite direction, nearly grazing Kay's shoulder, she sees from the corner of her eye. "I have a bad feeling about-" he begins to yell, but in a moment of frustration, she and Jim both fire back, "Quiet, Kay!"

They reach the elevator and she slams her fist down onto the tallest level, jamming the close button for more times than necessary. Kay and Jim fire back at their enemies, guards too young to be evil aiming at their heads and hearts; the majority miss-one grazes her ankle and leaves a burning sensation as she screams in anguish (what did her father feel as the blast bore into his body?), her only solace the button on the panel to close the elevator as the doors slowly seal their voyage to the floor below the roof, where the satellite is.

She pushes her hand into her mouth to bite the groans back, sagging against the cool metal of the lift. When she feels Jim's hand on her shoulder (she hears a distant, "Are you alright?"), she waves him off. "I'm fine, I'm fine." (She's not: an understatement.)

Blinking back tears, she breathes in a hiss of agony and straightens her spine, standing at attention, phaser ready. (For Papa, she tells herself, and Mama; she clutches the talisman around her neck, blood stained and yet still a comfort to her.)

At the top level, no one waits for them yet-they had a head start, but there are three other elevators close to arriving. A computer panel sits in the center of the hallway, and three closed hallways line the wall behind it. "Opening the entry to the roof now," Kay announces, heading toward the panel, clipping his phaser onto his belt.

(Tom had warned them of the level of security the citadel had; Kay replied that he had the best hacking skills in the world. She had raised an eyebrow at his confidence and turned to Jim for assurance at the mere teenager's claims. He shrugged and asked Kay, "Alright, so can you make doors open and lock them?"

Kay scoffed. "I can do much more than that, Captain.")

She and Jim hear a lock disengage within seconds of Kay typing on the panel and the middle hallway open to reveal a large ladder heading to the roof. She doesn't wait; she runs and begins the climb upward. Jim follows her closely behind.

She hears a ring, and when she turns back from the fifth rung she's already set her foot on, the second elevator opens. "Kay!"

The Vulcan has ducked behind the panel, but his hands are still typing so rapidly she can barely track the movement. "Go!" he pleads them. "Climb, keep going!"

"Kay, no!" Jim shouts, and he jumps down from the rung he's on, phaser blasting at the soldiers that have arrived-but the doors to the hallway begin closing, obstructing his aim.

"I'm locking the door," Kay replies, weak as green blood smears across the panel, hitting the final command with his right hand as his injured left fires his weapon blindly.

Jyn holds onto the rung, hands slick with sweat and heart beating with remorse-had she not held them both up, Kay would be alright. But there are phaser wounds across his arm and in his shoulder.

The boy who hated her, but quickly became her little brother collapses on the floor, his blood slipping from the corner of his mouth. "Goodbye," he mouths, and one of the soldiers round the corner of the panel.

They cannot see anything else as the left and right doors slowly meet except for the man aiming his phaser at the middle of Kay's forehead and firing. The silence that follows is more deafening than the shot.

For a moment, everything is still. Jim stands defeated in front of the closed doors, shoulders heavy from the loss of his- _their_ friend. When he turns around, his eyes are crimson colored and dull; she can barely maintain their gaze, a gaze so startling and agonized she can see herself reflected in them. Her arm, holding onto the rung above her, begins to cramp and tighten, and she forces herself to order both of them, "We have to keep going."

"I know," Jim says. "Set your phaser to kill." Without question, she obeys, and they continue upward.

The trip is silent, but it is anything but uncomfortable. It is a silence of shared misery and guilt; it is a silence of remembrance. They both know the others-many of the children they protected are now dead outside the citadel as their distraction. It is their responsibility to give the deaths worth.

She's near to the top, only a few rungs away from the latch to the roof, when she hears the doors slide open-she can barely stifle her gasp of panic. _Jim_ is below her. She cannot let what happened to Kay and her father-she cannot _lose_ Jim.

Jyn violently extracts her phaser from its clip, pointing it downwards and shooting, making sure her shots don't hit Jim, who fires into the crowd of soldiers below them. Three fall; four more at their hands.

Then only two are left, until-a white cape flutters into view, and the grey-white hair from her nightmares, the arrogant stance she witnessed murder her father appears. Resentment fires through her phaser and she shouts a battle cry into the air.

"Keep going! Jyn, keep going!"

 _They're climbing in the data vault; falling would kill them, and that is not an option. He takes heavy fire below her, and she tries to fight back, but he tells her to go on without him._

 _If no one survives, then the mission would surely fail. She has to go on without Cassian._

Jyn squeezes her eyes shut as she finds the next rung, and the next, and the next; Jim covers for her, shooting with impeccable aim at their enemies. Her hand reaches the latch, turning the lock; all she needs is to push it open-

A shriek of pain-it's hideous, horrible, stabbing her heart-it's Jim.

She turns to see him fall with a sickening crunch-

" _Cassian!"_

 _Brown eyes wide with shock before his spine cracks on the metal bridge; the body lands on an unnatural angle, blaster clattering beside him. His eyes, the ones that could penetrate through her masks and hit her where the most pain resulted, are closed._

Cassian-and Jim-are one and the same. The culprit is the same villain that pulled the trigger to end her father's life-Krennic is the only one standing below her.

She can't remember what happens next in the other world, in her other life, but her heart bursts with anguish as she tells herself to keep going. _You have to leave them_. Her lip quivers as she lets blazing tears fall down the ladder, but for them, for all of them, Jyn pushes open the hatch, the phaser blasts never piercing her as she pulls herself up into the hot air of Scarif.

On the roof, she can hear the shouts of panic below, yet some of them are sobs of freedom. Her other friends-for all she knows, they may be dead, as well, but the victory below tells her they have freed the ones living in Krennic's camps. It is up to her: _this_ , this is her father's legacy-the man who fought to send a message to Starfleet in order to save a planet from destruction.

She doesn't understand half of what she is doing; she only remembers what Kay instructed the two of them to do in the possibility he did not make it to the top. Her fingers tap the keyboard to type the message to Starfleet, explaining briefly that a famine, a genocide, and a dictator have taken over the planet, begging for help. When she pushes the button to end this horror, a metallic voice instructs, "Reset antenna alignment." She groans in frustration; she can hear a clock subtracting the time she has left until Krennic reaches the roof.

Her ankle wound festers, emerald flowing from her veins spilling across the metal bridge as she drags it across toward the satellite. Her hands flutter across the panel attached to the large dish, finding the correct instrument to align it-a few moments later, she registers, "Antenna realigned. Ready to transmit."

Jyn's vision begins to fade, and she stumbles and limps across the bridge once more to reach the communications center, memory flitting back to the time Kay had a phaser wound on his ankle, leading them to their first raid. Her hand starts to fall to press the button that will alert all of Starfleet and any ship around them of the death around her, when a voice shrieks, "Stop!"

She turns and sees Krennic standing, hand outstretched with a phaser pointed at her-set to kill.

"You," he spits with spite; he quivers with animosity.

"Me," she returns with matching amounts of emotion. "Jyn Erso, daughter of Galen and Lyra. And you've lost. You'll never win."

"Now where have I heard _that_ before?" he says, baring his teeth. Everyone, even dictators, turn into animals in their most desperate hours: for Krennic, his power, his control of this planet is threatened by mere children who will send a message to destroy everything he has done. "I suspected Galen was hiding something. And now, you lose everything. This building is set to explode with my weapon. Everyone will die-except for me. I lose nothing but time."

Jyn wants to laugh in his face-the others would have evacuated Krennic's prisoners if they were successful. Her, on the other hand… she will be with her family. And Cassian-Jim.

It'll be alright-she can't help but feel fear as his finger twitches and he is about to press and end her life-

A phaser blast, but she doesn't fall; she flinches at the sound, and looks up as the man who killed her family falls to the floor.

She almost sobs with relief and joy and surprise- _Jim_. No, Cassian. He leans on the edge of the communications center, breath heavy and back uneven, but his eyes-the blue of his eyes have been replaced with a knowing, dark amber that stares at her with memory.

"Jyn," he pants as she slams her hand down and fulfills their mission. "Jyn, I remember."

He collapses, dropping the phaser onto the platform, into her arms. "I know, Cassian."

They will die here. Together. ( _Again_ , a voice whispers in her ear-but she doesn't remember that far. Not yet-she doesn't think the universe can handle the absence of one James Tiberius Kirk.)

As she holds him up, she catches sight of the body on the bridge, dirt and blood and burns destroying the purity of the cape. When she lunges to finish the job-just in case-he holds her back from destroying herself, as he always does. "Hey, leave it. Leave it, Jyn. Let's go."

Even now, memories come back to her, as he asks, "Do you think anyone's listening?"

And she answers, "Someone has to be."

As they ride down the elevator, eyes locked onto each other's, breaths mixing, mouths close together, she remembers knowing her death was near, that this would end no other way.

When they stumble onto the dirt road meters away from the back door and fall to their knees in the empty, quiet town, freed by the other children, she remembers holding each other in an explosion from a weapon her father created, dying as he whispers her name like no other ever did or would.

The boy in front of her takes her hand and looks into her eyes, and she knows his memories plague him, as well. "Your father would have been proud of you, Jyn."

She's shaking her head, because this is not the way it should be-this is not the way it should end. There is a reason why Jyn was born as Jyn Erso, but Cassian was born as James Tiberius Kirk. There has to be-Jim is needed: Jim, the one whose uncle locked him in the barn when he was younger, belt wounds and bruises atop hay; the one who rarely saw his mother, who died when she saw his face, a reminder of her dead husband; the one who has a horrendous case of a hero complex, forced to remember how his father died to save 800 people as his one act as captain. Because maybe Cassian's soul is the same as Jim's, but their lives must be different as the Force wills it. Because maybe Jyn Erso is destined to die saving others in a moment of peace and redemption for all the lives she's taken to survive, and Cassian Andor deserves a life far longer than hers for all the lives he sacrificed for a cause.

 _All is as the Force wills it_ , Chirrut once said (she isn't sure in which life, but she remembers glassy eyes that shimmered with amusement as he said it, and is sure it is Chirrut).

"No, no, I can't allow this to happen." He looks at her, curious, confused; she rips the Kyber crystal from her hands, cradling it for the last time.

Her planet quakes and moves, and they turn to see the citadel in flames, the fire racing towards them in its madness. It's almost beautiful, the orange-red inflaming the dying purple sunset behind the wreckage of the building, lighting the sky for the approaching spacecrafts. She prays to the Force that she is right, that she is doing the right thing, and pushes her hope into Jim's chest, willing him to forget his past life as Cassian Andor and continue on as James Kirk. It fits perfectly, the crystal's brilliance igniting within him, restoring his eyes to the sky blue of Tarsus IV's skies and cocooning him from the fire around them, which, in its gorgeous brilliance, waves against him like an ocean against sand, like the beach where they died together-and now only one of them will.

As her father's weapon engulfs her, enveloping her in burning torment, she sobs, "Goodbye, Cassian," to unhearing ears, and becomes one with the Force.

* * *

 _Jim wakes in a hospital two weeks after the destruction of Scarif. He is one of the nine that survive that have seen Kodos's face, among which are Kev and Tom. Bodhi died in a stray explosion; Chirrut and Baze were shot together in an open field near the citadel. Kay, of course, he remembers, died for him, to enable him to broadcast the message of the events transpired on Tarsus IV._

 _When he comes to consciousness, his limbs are weak and his vision is hazed with pain and drugs; Starfleet asks the kids who he is, trapped in the middle of the citadel's explosion, miraculously surviving the blast and the subsequent fire with minimal burns but a broken back and a phaser wound on his side._

 _They find that JT-their outdated, unprepared technology does not allow them to fully determine who the teenager is-was their leader, defending them and gathering food for them throughout Kodos the Executioner's reign (including killing to protect the kids, claiming them as his own)._

 _Jim doesn't want to stay long. While he was asleep, the nurses tell him his kids were separated and given new identities, hidden throughout the universe, across the stars where he can always see them, but never meet them._

 _Staying away, being isolated from all of them, will protect them from the press, from Kodos's followers, from Kodos himself-the burnt body is barely proof of his death. Jim's gut is rarely wrong; though it isn't_ _ **logical**_ _, as Kay would criticize, he knows something is missing-not only Kodos's body, or himself brought to trial, but someone else entirely whose memory he has misplaced._

* * *

 _He heals, but there is nowhere to go. They wouldn't dare release the star Kelvin baby survived the Tarsus IV massacre, that Starfleet could not protect George Kelvin's baby although he has served and given so much to their organization._

 _His mother doesn't answer the hologram they give her, or the messages they leave her. There's no one at home he wants to go back to, and Sam-he knows is somewhere no one knows, where no one can ever find him ever again._

 _When the Starfleet doctors discharge him and confuse themselves over where to place him, he sneaks out on a cargo ship. He doesn't know where he's headed, but he knows he won't fill the gaping, hemorrhaging emptiness in his chest inside Starfleet's cage, where all they care of is his father's legacy and his mother's service and nothing of the scars he's earned in Riverside, Iowa._

* * *

 _He's drawn to the half-Vulcan, but he doesn't know_ _ **why**_ _. He knows it has something to do with the way he drawls on in that insufferable tone, yet shows more emotion than a simple man in his own way. It has something to do with when he was thirteen, when the world was a hellish flame, licking at his insides as they churned in empty circles. It has something to do with someone-he doesn't remember who, and he never asks why, keeping that planet tucked inside and away, his heart burning and his eyes strikingly sea-blue._

* * *

 _They find Kodos in a Shakespearean troupe, mask upon mask upon mask. His name is "Anton Karidian", but that doesn't fool him or the deep hatred sinking into his stomach, reopening the twenty-year-long wound he's never healed, the hole he has yet to fill._

 _The criminal acts as if he has never seen Kirk before, has never shot him in the back and let him fall forty feet to break his back; Jim likes to think he's ignoring the psychosomatic pain in his shoulder where he shot Kodos before he triumphed over the man, just as a phantom ghosts over his back, where the fall snapped his spine and the blaster wound burned because of the fire. Even when he tests him to see if his breath falters from rereading the scripted execution statement he's heard over and over again in his nightmares, Kodos plays the fool; Jim is more than happy to play the knight who slays the dragon._

 _Before JT overpowers Captain Kirk (he can still hear Kay's Vulcan tone droning on in his ear, just as Spock does), his First Officer and Chief Medical Officer advise him in his ready room, keeping him in check, as they always do._

 _(He doesn't know what he would do without Bones and Spock, keeping his twenty-year-old secret between the three of them, but they have done nothing to ease the feeling-the_ _ **knowledge**_ _that he is missing something, something from that planet he has locked away in the deepest corners of his memory, behind the strongest walls of his heart.)_

 _Things escalate, and then he's furious because seven of his remaining nine are dead because of a distraught, deranged daughter of a madman escaping his past in search of redemption, and he is in no forgiving mood, but he's even more filled with animosity for the girl because her father will never stand trial and be brought to chains for the horrors he's committed. Tom dies while he is visiting the grown man, the eye still haunted for life, albeit a short one (though it could have ended much sooner, he consoles himself; years of spending time with Bones as a brother by choice has taught him not to be as self-deprecating as he once was, but habits are habits)._

 _Kev, stationed in his own ship, almost falls thanks to Lenore; he is eternally grateful to Bones for saving the last of his survivors. It is only the two of them, now, and Kev only remembers the ordeal in bits and pieces._

 _He feels more alone than ever, staring at the stars which were once scattered with his kids from the Observation Deck. The hollowness, it seems, never fades away._

* * *

 _That night, he wakes by screaming, feeling unnatural in a bed, in a room and not stationed outside a place of shelter for the younger ones who follow him like little ducklings. He wonders how he traveled from the Observation Deck to the Captain's Quarters when his wandering eyes land on Bones, snoring in a chair beside his bed, fingers on his wrist, taking his pulse._

 _It seems its spike alerts his oldest friend-one of the only ones who has stayed with him through it all, through every secret (especially this one)-jerks awake, the permanent facade of a scowl overshadowed by the concern in his eyes. "Jim? Go back to sleep," the Southern accent thick with exhaustion and weariness._

 _He doesn't question his presence or his uncharacteristic gentleness, because he knows Bones and Bones knows him and Tarsus and all the things before and after. But he does fall asleep while mumbling, "Still feels empty."_

 _Before he slips away, Bones squeezes his hand and whispers, "That's alright, kid. It'll get better eventually. With all of us."_

 _But, for once, Bones is wrong about him-usually, he can read him like an open book, can see how insane he is for breaking regulation after regulation. This will never go away because it has nothing to do with Kodos or what happened or the wounds that haunt him though they don't exist. It's something that's disappeared, something that should be with him, or someone._

 _Jim can't figure it out, puzzling him for years and decades and a century, but for now, he loses to the abyss of unconsciousness, thankful Bones is there to keep the nightmares at bay._

* * *

 _Much, much later, the Nexus is peaceful and calm. There is nothing to do except to be, content and fulfilled and joyful. It's something he never thought he'd ever be._

 _The swirl of colors glares and fades and intensifies under his gaze, as if teasing him of his wondrous life he has left. To explore the unknown and discover strange new worlds-what a life he has lived._

 _It's over, now. The Nexus, he supposes, begs him to remain. To be. To_ _ **only**_ _be._

 _Somehow, he does not agree with its sentiments._

" _-ssian! Cassian!"_

 _He blinks, startled. He knows this name. He knows that voice._

 _He turns toward it, and there is a woman with striking green eyes of freedom and dreams, long brown hair tied in a bun, but loose strands tickle his cheeks as she stands close to him. A wave of familiarity and love washes over him._

 _When he opens his mouth to ask her who she is, she shushes him and places a palm over his heart._

 _He gasps as whiteness gorges over them, blinding and frightening and glorious all in one. He sees the whiteness of her smile, her reverence. When he feels her slender, cool finger tap his forehead gently, he stumbles backward at the rush that fills him completely and threatens to consume him in its power-_

 _-and he remembers. He remembers everything and all things, and_

" _ **Jyn**_ _," he breathes out, relieved and amazed at the wonders of the Force. For Cassian, the life he has lived as Kirk exceeds all others, but he knows the gaping wound he has felt for years is a result of the woman who stands before him. Jyn Erso's and Cassian Andor's souls are bound together, by death, by circumstance, by sorrow, by love, by the Force. There is no other way-where one goes, the other follows._

 _Blue clashes with green, as always, melting into a warm embrace._

 _The Kyber crystal floats freely between them, hanging from her neck once again._

" _Are you with me?"_

 _He smiles. "All the way."_

* * *

There's a sense of peace as the explosion engulfs her, in the locked embrace she and Cassian share, the need for touch as death invites them fulfilled. There's also a sense of excitement for what lies beyond, for what she does not know and cannot know until this next moment-

But somehow they know the past, the present, and the future. Somehow they know the lives they were destined and the lives they will live out in the distant future. Somehow they know that wherever they go, Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso will find each other, despite the death around them-or perhaps _because_ of the death around them, engulfing them in its grief and misery and troubles.

As they whisper Chirrut's prayer and wrap their arms around each other, they are content to follow wherever the Force takes them. There is, after all, no other way to meet again.

* * *

 **Yes, I know, that's not where Kirk dies. But, in this AU, Picard does not meet Kirk and he does not die with him.**

 **Let me know what you think!~~ Until next time, fandom.**


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